175 research outputs found
Scattering Amplitudes and Toric Geometry
In this paper we provide a first attempt towards a toric geometric
interpretation of scattering amplitudes. In recent investigations it has indeed
been proposed that the all-loop integrand of planar N=4 SYM can be represented
in terms of well defined finite objects called on-shell diagrams drawn on
disks. Furthermore it has been shown that the physical information of on-shell
diagrams is encoded in the geometry of auxiliary algebraic varieties called the
totally non negative Grassmannians. In this new formulation the infinite
dimensional symmetry of the theory is manifest and many results, that are quite
tricky to obtain in terms of the standard Lagrangian formulation of the theory,
are instead manifest. In this paper, elaborating on previous results, we
provide another picture of the scattering amplitudes in terms of toric
geometry. In particular we describe in detail the toric varieties associated to
an on-shell diagram, how the singularities of the amplitudes are encoded in
some subspaces of the toric variety, and how this picture maps onto the
Grassmannian description. Eventually we discuss the action of cluster
transformations on the toric varieties. The hope is to provide an alternative
description of the scattering amplitudes that could contribute in the
developing of this very interesting field of research.Comment: 58 pages, 25 figures, typos corrected, a reference added, to be
published in JHE
Combinatorics and Geometry of Transportation Polytopes: An Update
A transportation polytope consists of all multidimensional arrays or tables
of non-negative real numbers that satisfy certain sum conditions on subsets of
the entries. They arise naturally in optimization and statistics, and also have
interest for discrete mathematics because permutation matrices, latin squares,
and magic squares appear naturally as lattice points of these polytopes.
In this paper we survey advances on the understanding of the combinatorics
and geometry of these polyhedra and include some recent unpublished results on
the diameter of graphs of these polytopes. In particular, this is a thirty-year
update on the status of a list of open questions last visited in the 1984 book
by Yemelichev, Kovalev and Kravtsov and the 1986 survey paper of Vlach.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figure
Inside-Out Polytopes
We present a common generalization of counting lattice points in rational
polytopes and the enumeration of proper graph colorings, nowhere-zero flows on
graphs, magic squares and graphs, antimagic squares and graphs, compositions of
an integer whose parts are partially distinct, and generalized latin squares.
Our method is to generalize Ehrhart's theory of lattice-point counting to a
convex polytope dissected by a hyperplane arrangement. We particularly develop
the applications to graph and signed-graph coloring, compositions of an
integer, and antimagic labellings.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Adv. Mat
Some upper and lower bounds on PSD-rank
Positive semidefinite rank (PSD-rank) is a relatively new quantity with
applications to combinatorial optimization and communication complexity. We
first study several basic properties of PSD-rank, and then develop new
techniques for showing lower bounds on the PSD-rank. All of these bounds are
based on viewing a positive semidefinite factorization of a matrix as a
quantum communication protocol. These lower bounds depend on the entries of the
matrix and not only on its support (the zero/nonzero pattern), overcoming a
limitation of some previous techniques. We compare these new lower bounds with
known bounds, and give examples where the new ones are better. As an
application we determine the PSD-rank of (approximations of) some common
matrices.Comment: 21 page
Displacing Lagrangian toric fibers by extended probes
In this paper we introduce a new way of displacing Lagrangian fibers in toric
symplectic manifolds, a generalization of McDuff's original method of probes.
Extended probes are formed by deflecting one probe by another auxiliary probe.
Using them, we are able to displace all fibers in Hirzebruch surfaces except
those already known to be nondisplaceable, and can also displace an open dense
set of fibers in the weighted projective space P(1,3,5) after resolving the
singularities. We also investigate the displaceability question in sectors and
their resolutions. There are still many cases in which there is an open set of
fibers whose displaceability status is unknown.Comment: 53 pages, 26 figures; v3: minor corrections and updated references.
To appear in Algebraic & Geometric Topolog
Planar 3-dimensional assignment problems with Monge-like cost arrays
Given an cost array we consider the problem -P3AP
which consists in finding pairwise disjoint permutations
of such that
is minimized. For the case
the planar 3-dimensional assignment problem P3AP results.
Our main result concerns the -P3AP on cost arrays that are layered
Monge arrays. In a layered Monge array all matrices that result
from fixing the third index are Monge matrices. We prove that the -P3AP
and the P3AP remain NP-hard for layered Monge arrays. Furthermore, we show that
in the layered Monge case there always exists an optimal solution of the
-3PAP which can be represented as matrix with bandwidth . This
structural result allows us to provide a dynamic programming algorithm that
solves the -P3AP in polynomial time on layered Monge arrays when is
fixed.Comment: 16 pages, appendix will follow in v
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