Lossy gossip and composition of metrics

We study the monoid generated by n-by-n distance matrices under tropical (or min-plus) multiplication. Using the tropical geometry of the orthogonal group, we prove that this monoid is a finite polyhedral fan of dimension n(n-1)/2, and we compute the structure of this fan for n up to 5. The monoid captures gossip among n gossipers over lossy phone lines, and contains the gossip monoid over ordinary phone lines as a submonoid. We prove several new results about this submonoid, as well. In particular, we establish a sharp bound on chains of calls in each of which someone learns something new.Comment: Minor textual edits, final versio

Tropically Unirational Varieties

We introduce tropically unirational varieties, which are subvarieties of tori that admit dominant rational maps whose tropicalisation is surjective. The central (and unresolved) question is whether all unirational varieties are tropically unirational. We present several techniques for proving tropical unirationality, along with various examples.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of the CIEM Workshop on Tropical Geometr

Math saves the forest

Wireless sensor networks are decentralised networks consisting of sensors that can detect events and transmit data to neighbouring sensors. Ideally, this data is eventually gathered in a central base station. Wireless sensor networks have many possible applications. For example, they can be used to detect gas leaks in houses or fires in a forest.\ud In this report, we study data gathering in wireless sensor networks with the objective of minimising the time to send event data to the base station. We focus on sensors with a limited cache and take into account both node and transmission failures. We present two cache strategies and analyse the performance of these strategies for specific networks. For the case without node failures we give the expected arrival time of event data at the base station for both a line and a 2D grid network. For the case with node failures we study the expected arrival time on two-dimensional networks through simulation, as well as the influence of the broadcast range

Tropically unirational varieties

Abstract. We introduce tropically unirational varieties, which are subvarieties of tori that admit dominant rational maps whose tropicalisation is surjective. The central (and unresolved) question is whether all unirational varieties are tropically unirational. We present several techniques for proving tropical unirationality, along with various examples

Brauer algebras of simply laced type

The diagram algebra introduced by Brauer that describes the centralizer algebra of the n-fold tensor product of the natural representation of an orthogonal Lie group has a presentation by generators and relations that only depends on the path graph A_(n − 1) on n − 1 nodes. Here we describe an algebra depending on an arbitrary graph Q, called the Brauer algebra of type Q, and study its structure in the cases where Q is a Coxeter graph of simply laced spherical type (so its connected components are of type A_(n − 1), D_n , E_6, E_7, E_8). We find its irreducible representations and its dimension, and show that the algebra is cellular. The algebra is generically semisimple and contains the group algebra of the Coxeter group of type Q as a subalgebra. It is a ring homomorphic image of the Birman-Murakami-Wenzl algebra of type Q; this fact will be used in later work determining the structure of the Birman-Murakami-Wenzl algebras of simply laced spherical type

Lossy gossip and composition of metrics

No abstract