1,016 research outputs found
Counting Numerical Semigroups
A numerical semigroup is an additive submonoid of the natural numbers with
finite complement. The size of the complement is called the genus of the
semigroup. How many numerical semigroups have genus equal to ? We outline
Zhai's proof of a conjecture of Bras-Amor\'os that this sequence has
Fibonacci-like growth. We now know that this sequence asymptotically grows as
fast as the Fibonacci numbers, but it is still not known whether it is
nondecreasing. We discuss this and other open problems. We highlight the many
contributions made by undergraduates to problems in this area.Comment: 14 pages. To appear in American Mathematical Monthly special issue on
research by undergraduate
Parametric Polyhedra with at least Lattice Points: Their Semigroup Structure and the k-Frobenius Problem
Given an integral matrix , the well-studied affine semigroup
\mbox{ Sg} (A)=\{ b : Ax=b, \ x \in {\mathbb Z}^n, x \geq 0\} can be
stratified by the number of lattice points inside the parametric polyhedra
. Such families of parametric polyhedra appear in
many areas of combinatorics, convex geometry, algebra and number theory. The
key themes of this paper are: (1) A structure theory that characterizes
precisely the subset \mbox{ Sg}_{\geq k}(A) of all vectors b \in \mbox{
Sg}(A) such that has at least solutions. We
demonstrate that this set is finitely generated, it is a union of translated
copies of a semigroup which can be computed explicitly via Hilbert bases
computations. Related results can be derived for those right-hand-side vectors
for which has exactly solutions or fewer
than solutions. (2) A computational complexity theory. We show that, when
, are fixed natural numbers, one can compute in polynomial time an
encoding of \mbox{ Sg}_{\geq k}(A) as a multivariate generating function,
using a short sum of rational functions. As a consequence, one can identify all
right-hand-side vectors of bounded norm that have at least solutions. (3)
Applications and computation for the -Frobenius numbers. Using Generating
functions we prove that for fixed the -Frobenius number can be
computed in polynomial time. This generalizes a well-known result for by
R. Kannan. Using some adaptation of dynamic programming we show some practical
computations of -Frobenius numbers and their relatives
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