Related papers: A note on identities in plactic monoids and monoid…
The singleton and doubleton minors of a polymatroid $\rho$ encode a surprising amount of information about the structural complexity of $\rho$. Given any polymatroid $\rho$, we can subtract from it a maximally-separated polymatroid,…
In contrast to the situation in classical linear algebra, not every tropically non-singular matrix can be factored into a product of tropical elementary matrices. We do prove the factorizability of any tropically non-singular 2x2 matrix…
The face pairing graph of a 3-manifold triangulation is a 4-valent graph denoting which tetrahedron faces are identified with which others. We present a series of properties that must be satisfied by the face pairing graph of a closed…
We present a new proof of the well known formula for the rank of the inclusion matrix by constructing a $k\mathcal{S}_n$-module spanned by the columns of this matrix and calculating its dimension.
Young tableaux carry an associative product, described by the Schensted algorithm. They thus form a monoid $\mathbf{Pl}$, called \emph{plactic}. It is central in numerous combinatorial and algebraic applications. In this paper, the tableaux…
Melchior's inequality implies that the average line-length in a simple, rank-$3$, real-representable matroid is less than $3$. A similar result holds for complex-representable matroids, using Hirzebruch's inequality, but with a weaker bound…
We give a closed formula for the number of partitions $\lambda$ of $n$ such that the corresponding irreducible representation $V_\lambda$ of $S_n$ has non-trivial determinant. We determine how many of these partitions are self-conjugate and…
The lattice of monotone triangles $(\mathfrak{M}_n,\le)$ ordered by entry-wise comparisons is studied. Let $\tau_{\min}$ denote the unique minimal element in this lattice, and $\tau_{\max}$ the unique maximum. The number of $r$-tuples of…
A matroid is a machine capturing linearity of mathematical objects and producing combinatorial structures. Matroid structure arises everywhere since linearity is a ubiquitous concept. One natural way to obtain matroids is by considering…
The Catalan numbers form a sequence that counts over 200 combinatorial objects. A remarkable property of the Catalan numbers, which extends to these objects, is its recursive definition; that is, we can determine the $n^{th}$ object from…
In this paper, the canonical polyadic (CP) decomposition of tensors that corresponds to matrix multiplications is studied. Finding the rank of these tensors and computing the decompositions is a fundamental problem of algebraic complexity…
We determine the generic complete eigenstructures for $n \times n$ complex symmetric matrix polynomials of odd grade $d$ and rank at most $r$. More precisely, we show that the set of $n \times n$ complex symmetric matrix polynomials of odd…
If particles interact according to isotropic pair potentials that favor multiple length scales, in principle a large variety of different complex structures can be achieved by self-assembly. We present, motivate, and discuss a conjecture…
Motivated by applications to low-rank matrix completion, we give a combinatorial characterization of the independent sets in the algebraic matroid associated to the collection of $m\times n$ rank-2 matrices and $n\times n$ skew-symmetric…
Triangulations of a product of two simplices and, more generally, of root polytopes are closely related to Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky's theory of discriminants, to tropical geometry, tropical oriented matroids, and to generalized…
How much cutting is needed to simplify the topology of a surface? We provide bounds for several instances of this question, for the minimum length of topologically non-trivial closed curves, pants decompositions, and cut graphs with a given…
The cyclic shift graph of a monoid is the graph whose vertices are elements of the monoid and whose edges link elements that differ by a cyclic shift. For certain monoids connected with combinatorics, such as the plactic monoid (the monoid…
In this paper, we study the non trivial idempotents of the $2 \times 2$ matrix ring over the polynomial ring $\mathbb{Z}_{pqr}[x]$ for distinct primes $p, q $ and $r$ greater than $3$. We have classified all the idempotents of this matrix…
I revisit an automated proof of Andrews' pentagonal number theorem found by Riese. I uncover a simple polynomial identity hidden behind his proof. I explain how to use this identity to prove Andrews' result along with a variety of new…
In this note we give a short and elementary proof of a more general version of Whitney's theorem that 3-connected planar graphs have a unique embedding in the plane. A consequence of the theorem is that cubic plane graphs cannot be embedded…