Related papers: Almost every Latin square has a decomposition into…
We make progress on three long standing conjectures from the 1960s about path and cycle decompositions of graphs. Gallai conjectured that any connected graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into at most $\left\lceil…
We show the Alon-Tarsi conjecture on Latin squares is equivalent to a very special case of a conjecture made independently by Hadamard and Howe, and to the non-vanishing of some interesting integrals over SU(n). Our investigations were…
In 1907, Henry Ernest Dudeney posed a puzzle: ``cut any equilateral triangle \dots\ into as few pieces as possible that will fit together and form a perfect square'' (without overlap, via translation and rotation). Four weeks later, Dudeney…
It was shown by van Rees \cite{vR} that a latin square of order $n$ has at most $n^2(n-1)/18$ latin subsquares of order $3$. He conjectured that this bound is only achieved if $n$ is a power of $3$. We show that it can only be achieved if…
While it is a classical result dating back to Dehn (1903) that squares composing a perfect rectangle must have rational side lengths, the arithmetic complexity of these tilings, specifically the growth of the denominators of these rational…
In 1958, Sierpinski asked whether there exists a linear order $X$ that is isomorphic to its lexicographically ordered cube but is not isomorphic to its square. The main result of this paper is that the answer is negative. More generally, if…
The fundamental combinatorial structure of a net in CP^2 is its associated set of mutually orthogonal latin squares. We define equivalence classes of sets of orthogonal Latin squares by label equivalences of the lines of the corresponding…
A quadrilateral is said to be rational if its four sides, the two diagonals and the area are all expressible by rational numbers. The problem of constructing rational quadrilaterals dates back to the seventh century when Brahmagupta gave an…
The Descartes circle theorem states that if four circles are mutually tangent with disjoint intersion, then their curvatures (or "bends) b_j = 1/r_j satisfy the relation (b_1 + b_2 + b_3 + b_4)^2 = 2(b_1^2 + b_2^2 + b_3^2 + b_4^2). We show…
In this paper, we prove that the existence of a complete set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in N-dimensional Hilbert space implies the existence of a complete set of mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLSs) of order N. In particular, we…
Gallai's conjecture asserts that every connected graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into $\frac{n+1}{2}$ paths. For general graphs (possibly disconnected), it was proved that every graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into…
Latin tableaux are a generalization of Latin squares, which first appeared in the early 2000's in a paper of Chow, Fan, Goemans, and Vondr\'{a}k. Here, we extend the notion of isotopy, a permutation group action, from Latin squares to Latin…
If $N={q^k}{n^2}$ is an odd perfect number given in Eulerian form, then the Descartes-Frenicle-Sorli conjecture predicts that $k=\nu_{q}(N)=1$. In this article, we give a short proof for this conjecture.
Explicit algorithms are developed for constructing odd order n pandiagonal latin cubes in 3 and 4 dimensions, and these are used to construct pandiagonal magic cubes and 4 dimensional hypercubes, respectively. It is established that these…
We will show that there are at least 8, 10 and 9 mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS) of orders $n=54$, $96$ and $108$. The cases $n=54$ and $96$ are obtained by constructing separable permutation codes consisting of $8 \times 54$ and…
An explicit construction of closed, orientable, smooth, aspherical 4-manifolds with any odd Euler characteristic greater than 12 is presented. The manifolds constructed here are all Haken manifolds in the sense of B. Foozwell and H.…
A critical set in an $n \times n$ array is a set $C$ of given entries, such that there exists a unique extension of $C$ to an $n\times n$ Latin square and no proper subset of $C$ has this property. The cardinality of the largest critical…
Over 50 years ago, Erd\H{o}s and Gallai conjectured that the edges of every graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into $O(n)$ cycles and edges. Among other results, Conlon, Fox and Sudakov recently proved that this holds for the random…
P. J. Federico used the term low-order for perfect squared squares with at most 28 squares in their dissection. In 2010 low-order compound perfect squared squares (CPSSs) were completely enumerated. Up to symmetries of the square and its…
A central question in invariant theory is that of determining the relations among invariants. Geometric invariant theory quotients come with a natural ample line bundle, and hence often a natural projective embedding. This question…