Related papers: Bounding Klarner's constant from above using a sim…

Although known lower bounds for the growth rate $\lambda$ of polyominoes, or Klarner's constant, are already close to the empirically estimated value $4.06$, almost no conceptual progress on upper bounds has occurred since the seminal work…

Let $P(n)$ be the number of polyominoes of $n$ cells and $\lambda$ be Klarner's constant, that is, $\lambda=\lim_{n\to\infty} \sqrt[n]{P(n)}$. We show that there exist some positive numbers $A,T$, so that for every $n$ \[ P(n) \ge…

While the number of polyominoes is known to be supermultiplicative by a simple concatenation argument, it is still unknown whether the same applies to polyiamonds. This article proves that if $\ell,m$ are not both $1$, then $T(\ell+m)\ge…

In this paper, we introduce and study {\it Carlitz polyominoes}. In particular, we show that, as $n$ grows to infinity, asymptotically the number of \begin{enumerate} \item column-convex Carlitz polyominoes with perimeter $2n$ is \beq…

We provide a short and elementary proof that the growth constant of polyiamonds is at most $1+2z+3z^2$ for the unique real root $z$ of the equation $2z^3+z^2-1=0$. This coincidentally suffices to recover the best known upper bound $3.6108$.…

Lin and Chang gave a generating function of convex polyominoes with an $m+1$ by $n+1$ minimal bounding rectangle. Gessel showed that their result implies that the number of such polyominoes is $$ \frac{m+n+mn}{m+n}{2m+2n\choose…

For $d \geq 2$ and $n \in \mathbb{N}$ even, let $p_n = p_n(d)$ denote the number of length $n$ self-avoiding polygons in $\mathbb{Z}^d$ up to translation. The polygon cardinality grows exponentially, and the growth rate $\lim_{n \in…

Column-convex polyominoes are by now a well-explored model. So far, however, no attention has been given to polyominoes whose columns can have either one or two connected components. This little known kind of polyominoes seems not to be…

Generalizing some popular sequences like Catalan's number, Schr\"oder's number, etc, we consider the sequence $s_n$ with $s_0=1$ and for $n\ge 1$, \begin{multline*} s_n=\sum_{x_1+\dots+x_{\ell_1}=n-1} \kappa_1 s_{x_1}\dots s_{x_{\ell_1}} +…

How many $n$-step polygons exist that contain a given vertex of an infinite quasi-transitive graph $G$? The exponential growth rate of such polygons is identified as the connective constant when $G$ has sub-exponential growth and possesses…

We classify all convex polyomino whose coordinate rings are Gorenstein. We also compute the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of the coordinate ring of any stack polyomino in terms of the smallest interval which contains its vertices. We give…

Convex polyominoes can be refined according to the number of direction changes in monotone paths connecting pairs of cells, leading to the notion of $k$-convexity. In particular, the cases $k=1$ and $k=2$ correspond to $L$-convex and…

A $d$-dimensional polycube is a facet-connected set of cells (cubes) on the $d$-dimensional cubical lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$. Let $A_d(n)$ denote the number of $d$-dimensional polycubes (distinct up to translations) with $n$ cubes, and…

Let $n>2r>0$ be integers. We consider families $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of an $n$-element set, in which the union of any two members has size at most $2r$. One of our results states that for $n\geq 6r$ the number of members of size…

Baader, J\"org, and Parlier recently established an upper bound for the crossing number of curve systems of size $m\asymp g^{1+\alpha}$ on a genus $g$ surface, obtaining a leading coefficient of $9/4=2.25$. Their construction relies on…

Column-convex polygons were first counted by area several decades ago, and the result was found to be a simple, rational, generating function. In this chapter we generalize that result. Let a p-column polyomino be a polyomino whose columns…

We prove that the number of single element extensions of $M(K_{n+1})$ is $2^{{n\choose n/2}(1+o(1))}$. This is done using a characterization of extensions as "linear subclasses".

For a given natural number $n$, the second part of Hilbert's 16th Problem asks whether there exists a finite upper bound for the maximum number of limit cycles that planar polynomial vector fields of degree $n$ can have. This maximum number…

In this paper we consider a restricted class of convex polyominoes that we call Z-convex polyominoes. Z-convex polyominoes are polyominoes such that any two pairs of cells can be connected by a monotone path making at most two turns (like…

Let $K/\mathbb{Q}$ be a finite extension. We prove that the minimal height of polynomials of degree $n$ of which all roots are in $K^\times$ increases exponentially in $n$. We determine the implied constant exactly for totally real $K$ and…