On the number of fully packed loop configurations with a fixed associated matching

We show that the number of fully packed loop configurations corresponding to a matching with $m$ nested arches is polynomial in $m$ if $m$ is large enough, thus essentially proving two conjectures by Zuber [Electronic J. Combin. 11 (2004), Article #R13].Comment: AnS-LaTeX, 43 pages; Journal versio

Loops, matchings and alternating-sign matrices

The appearance of numbers enumerating alternating sign matrices in stationary states of certain stochastic processes is reviewed. New conjectures concerning nest distribution functions are presented as well as a bijection between certain classes of alternating sign matrices and lozenge tilings of hexagons with cut off corners.Comment: LaTeX, 26 pages, 44 figures, extended version of a talk given at the 14th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (Melbourne 2002); Version2: Changed title, expanded some sections and included more picture

On some polynomials enumerating Fully Packed Loop configurations

We are interested in the enumeration of Fully Packed Loop configurations on a grid with a given noncrossing matching. By the recently proved Razumov--Stroganov conjecture, these quantities also appear as groundstate components in the Completely Packed Loop model. When considering matchings with p nested arches, these numbers are known to be polynomials in p. In this article, we present several conjectures about these polynomials: in particular, we describe all real roots, certain values of these polynomials, and conjecture that the coefficients are positive. The conjectures, which are of a combinatorial nature, are supported by strong numerical evidence and the proofs of several special cases. We also give a version of the conjectures when an extra parameter tau is added to the equations defining the groundstate of the Completely Packed Loop model.Comment: 27 pages. Modifications reflecting the recent proof of the Razumov--Stroganov conjecture; also added some references and a more detailed conclusio

Fully Packed Loops in a triangle: matchings, paths and puzzles

Fully Packed Loop configurations in a triangle (TFPLs) first appeared in the study of ordinary Fully Packed Loop configurations (FPLs) on the square grid where they were used to show that the number of FPLs with a given link pattern that has m nested arches is a polynomial function in m. It soon turned out that TFPLs possess a number of other nice properties. For instance, they can be seen as a generalized model of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. We start our article by introducing oriented versions of TFPLs; their main advantage in comparison with ordinary TFPLs is that they involve only local constraints. Three main contributions are provided. Firstly, we show that the number of ordinary TFPLs can be extracted from a weighted enumeration of oriented TFPLs and thus it suffices to consider the latter. Secondly, we decompose oriented TFPLs into two matchings and use a classical bijection to obtain two families of nonintersecting lattice paths (path tangles). This point of view turns out to be extremely useful for giving easy proofs of previously known conditions on the boundary of TFPLs necessary for them to exist. One example is the inequality d(u)+d(v)<=d(w) where u,v,w are 01-words that encode the boundary conditions of ordinary TFPLs and d(u) is the number of cells in the Ferrers diagram associated with u. In the third part we consider TFPLs with d(w)- d(u)-d(v)=0,1; in the first case their numbers are given by Littlewood-Richardson coefficients, but also in the second case we provide formulas that are in terms of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. The proofs of these formulas are of a purely combinatorial nature.Comment: 40 pages, 31 figure

The toggle group, homomesy, and the Razumov-Stroganov correspondence

The Razumov-Stroganov correspondence, an important link between statistical physics and combinatorics proved in 2011 by L. Cantini and A. Sportiello, relates the ground state eigenvector of the O(1) dense loop model on a semi-infinite cylinder to a refined enumeration of fully-packed loops, which are in bijection with alternating sign matrices. This paper reformulates a key component of this proof in terms of posets, the toggle group, and homomesy, and proves two new homomesy results on general posets which we hope will have broader implications.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, final versio

A Bijection between classes of Fully Packed Loops and Plane Partitions

It has recently been observed empirically that the number of FPL configurations with 3 sets of a, b and c nested arches equals the number of plane partitions in a box of size a x b x c. In this note, this result is proved by constructing explicitly the bijection between these FPL and plane partitions

Configurational statistics of densely and fully packed loops in the negative-weight percolation model

By means of numerical simulations we investigate the configurational properties of densely and fully packed configurations of loops in the negative-weight percolation (NWP) model. In the presented study we consider 2d square, 2d honeycomb, 3d simple cubic and 4d hypercubic lattice graphs, where edge weights are drawn from a Gaussian distribution. For a given realization of the disorder we then compute a configuration of loops, such that the configurational energy, given by the sum of all individual loop weights, is minimized. For this purpose, we employ a mapping of the NWP model to the "minimum-weight perfect matching problem" that can be solved exactly by using sophisticated polynomial-time matching algorithms. We characterize the loops via observables similar to those used in percolation studies and perform finite-size scaling analyses, up to side length L=256 in 2d, L=48 in 3d and L=20 in 4d (for which we study only some observables), in order to estimate geometric exponents that characterize the configurations of densely and fully packed loops. One major result is that the loops behave like uncorrelated random walks from dimension d=3 on, in contrast to the previously studied behavior at the percolation threshold, where random-walk behavior is obtained for d>=6.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure