1,190 research outputs found
Bijections and symmetries for the factorizations of the long cycle
We study the factorizations of the permutation into factors
of given cycle types. Using representation theory, Jackson obtained for each
an elegant formula for counting these factorizations according to the
number of cycles of each factor. In the cases Schaeffer and Vassilieva
gave a combinatorial proof of Jackson's formula, and Morales and Vassilieva
obtained more refined formulas exhibiting a surprising symmetry property. These
counting results are indicative of a rich combinatorial theory which has
remained elusive to this point, and it is the goal of this article to establish
a series of bijections which unveil some of the combinatorial properties of the
factorizations of into factors for all . We thereby obtain
refinements of Jackson's formulas which extend the cases treated by
Morales and Vassilieva. Our bijections are described in terms of
"constellations", which are graphs embedded in surfaces encoding the transitive
factorizations of permutations
Separation probabilities for products of permutations
We study the mixing properties of permutations obtained as a product of two
uniformly random permutations of fixed cycle types. For instance, we give an
exact formula for the probability that elements are in distinct
cycles of the random permutation of obtained as product of two
uniformly random -cycles
Tame Decompositions and Collisions
A univariate polynomial f over a field is decomposable if f = g o h = g(h)
for nonlinear polynomials g and h. It is intuitively clear that the
decomposable polynomials form a small minority among all polynomials over a
finite field. The tame case, where the characteristic p of Fq does not divide n
= deg f, is fairly well-understood, and we have reasonable bounds on the number
of decomposables of degree n. Nevertheless, no exact formula is known if
has more than two prime factors. In order to count the decomposables, one wants
to know, under a suitable normalization, the number of collisions, where
essentially different (g, h) yield the same f. In the tame case, Ritt's Second
Theorem classifies all 2-collisions.
We introduce a normal form for multi-collisions of decompositions of
arbitrary length with exact description of the (non)uniqueness of the
parameters. We obtain an efficiently computable formula for the exact number of
such collisions at degree n over a finite field of characteristic coprime to p.
This leads to an algorithm for the exact number of decomposable polynomials at
degree n over a finite field Fq in the tame case
Matrix factorizations and link homology
For each positive integer n the HOMFLY polynomial of links specializes to a
one-variable polynomial that can be recovered from the representation theory of
quantum sl(n). For each such n we build a doubly-graded homology theory of
links with this polynomial as the Euler characteristic. The core of our
construction utilizes the theory of matrix factorizations, which provide a
linear algebra description of maximal Cohen-Macaulay modules on isolated
hypersurface singularities.Comment: 108 pages, 61 figures, latex, ep
Proper caterpillars are distinguished by their symmetric chromatic function
This paper deals with the so-called Stanley conjecture, which asks whether
they are non-isomorphic trees with the same symmetric function generalization
of the chromatic polynomial. By establishing a correspondence between
caterpillars trees and integer compositions, we prove that caterpillars in a
large class (we call trees in this class proper) have the same symmetric
chromatic function generalization of the chromatic polynomial if and only if
they are isomorphic
A simple model of trees for unicellular maps
We consider unicellular maps, or polygon gluings, of fixed genus. A few years
ago the first author gave a recursive bijection transforming unicellular maps
into trees, explaining the presence of Catalan numbers in counting formulas for
these objects. In this paper, we give another bijection that explicitly
describes the "recursive part" of the first bijection. As a result we obtain a
very simple description of unicellular maps as pairs made by a plane tree and a
permutation-like structure. All the previously known formulas follow as an
immediate corollary or easy exercise, thus giving a bijective proof for each of
them, in a unified way. For some of these formulas, this is the first bijective
proof, e.g. the Harer-Zagier recurrence formula, the Lehman-Walsh formula and
the Goupil-Schaeffer formula. We also discuss several applications of our
construction: we obtain a new proof of an identity related to covered maps due
to Bernardi and the first author, and thanks to previous work of the second
author, we give a new expression for Stanley character polynomials, which
evaluate irreducible characters of the symmetric group. Finally, we show that
our techniques apply partially to unicellular 3-constellations and to related
objects that we call quasi-constellations.Comment: v5: minor revision after reviewers comments, 33 pages, added a
refinement by degree of the Harer-Zagier formula and more details in some
proof
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