The Order Dimension of the Poset of Regions in a Hyperplane Arrangement

We show that the order dimension of the weak order on a Coxeter group of type A, B or D is equal to the rank of the Coxeter group, and give bounds on the order dimensions for the other finite types. This result arises from a unified approach which, in particular, leads to a simpler treatment of the previously known cases, types A and B. The result for weak orders follows from an upper bound on the dimension of the poset of regions of an arbitrary hyperplane arrangement. In some cases, including the weak orders, the upper bound is the chromatic number of a certain graph. For the weak orders, this graph has the positive roots as its vertex set, and the edges are related to the pairwise inner products of the roots.Comment: Minor changes, including a correction and an added figure in the proof of Proposition 2.2. 19 pages, 6 figure

A hierarchical structure of transformation semigroups with applications to probability limit measures

The structure of transformation semigroups on a finite set is analyzed by introducing a hierarchy of functions mapping subsets to subsets. The resulting hierarchy of semigroups has a corresponding hierarchy of minimal ideals, or kernels. This kernel hierarchy produces a set of tools that provides direct access to computations of interest in probability limit theorems; in particular, finding certain factors of idempotent limit measures. In addition, when considering transformation semigroups that arise naturally from edge colorings of directed graphs, as in the road-coloring problem, the hierarchy produces simple techniques to determine the rank of the kernel and to decide when a given kernel is a right group. In particular, it is shown that all kernels of rank one less than the number of vertices must be right groups and their structure for the case of two generators is described.Comment: 35 pages, 4 figure