Related papers: Latin transversals of rectangular arrays

We prove that for all n>1 every latin n-dimensional cube of order 5 has transversals. We find all 123 paratopy classes of layer-latin cubes of order 5 with no transversals. For each $n\geq 3$ and $q\geq 3$ we construct a (2q-2)-layer latin…

A $k$-plex of a latin square is a collection of cells representing each row, column, and symbol precisely $k$ times. The classic case of $k=1$ is more commonly known as a transversal. We introduce the concept of a $k$-weight, an integral…

We suggest and explore a matroidal version of the Brualdi - Ryser conjecture about Latin squares. We prove that any $n\times n$ matrix, whose rows and columns are bases of a matroid, has an independent partial transversal of length…

We consider the problem of constructing Latin cubes subject to the condition that some symbols may not appear in certain cells. We prove that there is a constant $\gamma > 0$ such that if $n=2^k$ and $A$ is $3$-dimensional $n\times n\times…

For every positive integer $n$ greater than $4$ there is a set of Latin squares of order $n$ such that every permutation of the numbers $1,\ldots,n$ appears exactly once as a row, a column, a reverse row or a reverse column of one of the…

A Latin square has six conjugate Latin squares obtained by uniformly permuting its (row, column, symbol) triples. We say that a Latin square has conjugate symmetry if at least two of its six conjugates are equal. We enumerate Latin squares…

A Latin square of order $n$ with symbols $a_1,\ldots,a_n$ can be considered as a multiplication table for binary operation in the set $A=\{a_1,\ldots,a_n\}$. We prove that, if this operation is associative, then $A$ is a group.

In this note we show that for each Latin square $L$ of order $n\geq 2$, there exists a Latin square $L'\neq L$ of order $n$ such that $L$ and $L'$ differ in at most $8\sqrt{n}$ cells. Equivalently, each Latin square of order $n$ contains a…

A quantum Latin square of order $n$ (denoted as QLS$(n)$) is an $n\times n$ array whose entries are unit column vectors from the $n$-dimensional Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}_n$, such that each row and column forms an orthonormal basis. Two…

We investigate retransmission permutation arrays (RPAs) that are motivated by applications in overlapping channel transmissions. An RPA is an $n\times n$ array in which each row is a permutation of ${1, ..., n}$, and for $1\leq i\leq n$,…

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…

We discuss the problem of existence of latin squares without a substructure consisting of six elements $(r_1,c_2,l_3)$, $(r_2,c_3,l_1)$, $(r_3,c_1,l_2)$, $(r_2,c_1,l_3)$, $(r_3,c_2,l_1)$, $(r_1,c_3,l_2)$. Equivalently, the corresponding…

Latin squares are well studied combinatorial objects. In this paper we generalize the concept and propose new objects like Latin triangles, free Latin squares, Latin tetrahedra, free Latin cubes, etc. We start with a classic definition of…

A Latin square of order $n$ is an $n\times n$ array which contains $n$ distinct symbols exactly once in each row and column. We define the adjacent distance between two adjacent cells (containing integers) to be their difference modulo $n$,…

We use a greedy probabilistic method to prove that for every $\epsilon > 0$, every $m\times n$ Latin rectangle on $n$ symbols has an orthogonal mate, where $m=(1-\epsilon)n$. That is, we show the existence of a second Latin rectangle such…

A $k \times n$ partial Latin rectangle is \textit{$C$-sparse} if the number of nonempty entries in each row and column is at most $C$ and each symbol is used at most $C$ times. We prove that the probability a uniformly random $k \times n$…

Given an $n\times n$ array $M$ ($n\ge 7$), where each cell is colored in one of two colors, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a partition of $M$ into $n$ diagonals, each containing at least one cell of each…

A quantum Latin square of order $n$ (denoted as QLS$(n)$) is an $n\times n$ array whose entries are unit column vectors from the $n$-dimensional Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}_n$, such that each row and column forms an orthonormal basis. Two…

Let $T(n)$ denote the maximal number of transversals in an order-$n$ Latin square. Improving on the bounds obtained by McKay et al., Taranenko recently proved that $T(n) \leq \left((1+o(1))\frac{n}{e^2}\right)^{n}$, and conjectured that…

An $n \times n$ partial Latin square $P$ is called $\alpha$-dense if each row and column has at most $\alpha n$ non-empty cells and each symbol occurs at most $\alpha n$ times in $P$. An $n \times n$ array $A$ where each cell contains a…