1,229 research outputs found
Transitive factorizations of permutations and geometry
We give an account of our work on transitive factorizations of permutations.
The work has had impact upon other areas of mathematics such as the enumeration
of graph embeddings, random matrices, branched covers, and the moduli spaces of
curves. Aspects of these seemingly unrelated areas are seen to be related in a
unifying view from the perspective of algebraic combinatorics. At several
points this work has intertwined with Richard Stanley's in significant ways.Comment: 12 pages, dedicated to Richard Stanley on the occasion of his 70th
birthda
Entropy in Dimension One
This paper completely classifies which numbers arise as the topological
entropy associated to postcritically finite self-maps of the unit interval.
Specifically, a positive real number h is the topological entropy of a
postcritically finite self-map of the unit interval if and only if exp(h) is an
algebraic integer that is at least as large as the absolute value of any of the
conjugates of exp(h); that is, if exp(h) is a weak Perron number. The
postcritically finite map may be chosen to be a polynomial all of whose
critical points are in the interval (0,1). This paper also proves that the weak
Perron numbers are precisely the numbers that arise as exp(h), where h is the
topological entropy associated to ergodic train track representatives of outer
automorphisms of a free group.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figures. This paper was completed by the author before
his death, and was uploaded by Dylan Thurston. A version including endnotes
by John Milnor will appear in the proceedings of the Banff conference on
Frontiers in Complex Dynamic
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