Related papers: A remark about Mahler's conjecture and the maximum…
The Mahler volume of a centrally symmetric convex body K is defined as M(K)= (Vol K)(Vol K^dual). Mahler conjectured that this volume is minimized when K is a cube. We introduce the bottleneck conjecture, which stipulates that a certain…
The Schinzel Hypothesis is a conjecture about irreducible polynomials in one variable over the integers: under some standard condition, they should assume infinitely many prime values at integers. We consider a relative version: if the…
In this paper, we study the extremal behaviour of deep holes in polyominoes. We determine the maximum number, $h_n$ of deep holes that an $n$-omino can enclose, ensuring that the boundary of each hole is disjoint from the boundaries of any…
We study a class of 2-variable polynomials called exact polynomials which contains $A$-polynomials of knot complements. The Mahler measure of these polynomials can be computed in terms of a volume function defined on the vanishing set of…
Using the celebrated Morris Constant Term Identity, we deduce a recent conjecture of Chan, Robbins, and Yuen (math.CO/9810154), that asserts that the volume of a certain $n(n-1)/2$-dimensional polytope is given by the product of the first…
A sunflower is a collection of distinct sets such that the intersection of any two of them is the same as the common intersection $C$ of all of them, and $|C|$ is smaller than each of the sets. A longstanding conjecture due to Erd\H{o}s and…
We observe that a large part of the volume of a hyperbolic polyhedron is taken by a tubular neighbourhood of its boundary, and use this to give a new proof for the finiteness of arithmetic maximal reflection groups following a recent work…
A popular method in combinatorial optimization is to express polytopes P, which may potentially have exponentially many facets, as solutions of linear programs that use few extra variables to reduce the number of constraints down to a…
A number of authors have proven explicit versions of Lehmer's conjecture for polynomials whose coefficients are all congruent to 1 modulo m. We prove a similar result for polynomials f(X) that are divisible in (Z/mZ)[X] by a polynomial of…
The Mahler measure of the polynomials $t(x^m-1) y - (x^n-1) \in \dC[x,y]$ is essentially the sum of volumes of a certain collection of ideal hyperbolic polyhedra in $\HH^3$, which can be determined a priori as a function on the parameter…
We consider the Mahler measure of the polynomial 1+x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4, which is the first case not yet evaluated explicitly. A conjecture due to F. Rodriguez-Villegas represents this Mahler measure as a special value at the point 4 of the…
We generalize the recent invariant polytope algorithm for computing the joint spectral radius and extend it to a wider class of matrix sets. This, in particular, makes the algorithm applicable to sets of matrices that have finitely many…
We prove a sharp upper bound on the number of distinct columns of a totally unimodular matrix with column sums $1$ improving upon Heller's classical bound. The proof uses Seymour's decomposition theorem. Such matrices are closely related to…
Pilz's conjecture states that for any finite set $A=\{a_1,a_2,\dots,a_k\}$ of positive integers and positive integer $n$ in the union of the sets $\{a_1,2a_1,\dots,na_1\},\dots, \{a_k,2a_k,\dots,na_k\}$ (considered as a multiset) at least…
We study the maximum weight convex polytope problem, in which the goal is to find a convex polytope maximizing the total weight of enclosed points. Prior to this work, the only known result for this problem was an $O(n^3)$ algorithm for the…
In this paper we report on new results relating to a conjecture regarding properties of $n\times n$, $n\leq 6$, positive definite matrices. The conjecture has been proven for $n\leq 4$ using computer-assisted sum of squares (SoS) methods…
The Mahler measure of a nonzero $n$-variable polynomial $P$ is the integral of $\log|P|$ on the unit $n$-torus. A result of Boyd and Lawton says that the Mahler measure of a multivariate polynomial is the limit of Mahler measures of…
In 2008, Schmidt and Tuller stated a conjecture concerning optimal packing and covering of integers by translates of a given three-point set. In this note, we confirm their conjecture and relate it to several other problems in…
Let $R=\mathcal{O}_{\Q(\sqrt{d})}$ for $d<0$, squarefree, $d\neq -1,-3$. We prove Lehmer's conjecture for associated reciprocal polynomials of $R$-matrices; that is, any noncyclotomic $R$-matrix has Mahler measure at least…
What is the maximum number of holes that a polyomino with $n$ tiles can enclose? Call this number $f(n)$. We show that if $n_k = \left( 2^{2k+1} + 3 \cdot 2^{k+1}+4 \right) / 3$ and $h_k = \left( 2^{2k}-1 \right) /3$, then $f(n_k) = h_k$…