English

A bijection between necklaces and multisets with divisible subset sum

Combinatorics 2024-12-02 v2

Abstract

Consider these two distinct combinatorial objects: (1) the necklaces of length nn with at most qq colors, and (2) the multisets of integers modulo nn with subset sum divisible by nn and with the multiplicity of each element being strictly less than qq. We show that these two objects have the same cardinality when qq and nn are mutually coprime. Additionally, when qq is a prime power, we construct a bijection between these two objects by viewing necklaces as cyclic polynomials over the finite field of size qq. Specializing to q=2q=2 answers a bijective problem posed by Richard Stanley.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.03507,
  title  = {A bijection between necklaces and multisets with divisible subset sum},
  author = {Swee Hong Chan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.03507},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

14 pages; v2 has additional details for the proof of Lemma 4.11 and other stylistic changes suggested by the referee

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:17:42.975Z