Determinants of incidence and Hessian matrices arising from the vector space lattice

Let $\mathcal{V}=\bigsqcup_{i=0}^n\mathcal{V}_i$ be the lattice of subspaces of the $n$-dimensional vector space over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ and let $\mathcal{A}$ be the graded Gorenstein algebra defined over $\mathbb{Q}$ which has $\mathcal{V}$ as a $\mathbb{Q}$ basis. Let $F$ be the Macaulay dual generator for $\mathcal{A}$. We compute explicitly the Hessian determinant $|\frac{\partial ^2F}{\partial X_i \partial X_j}|$ evaluated at the point $X_1 = X_2 = \cdots = X_N=1$ and relate it to the determinant of the incidence matrix between $\mathcal{V}_1$ and $\mathcal{V}_{n-1}$. Our exploration is motivated by the fact that both of these matrices arise naturally in the study of the Sperner property of the lattice and the Lefschetz property for the graded Artinian Gorenstein algebra associated to it

Lower Bounds for Real Solutions to Sparse Polynomial Systems

We show how to construct sparse polynomial systems that have non-trivial lower bounds on their numbers of real solutions. These are unmixed systems associated to certain polytopes. For the order polytope of a poset P this lower bound is the sign-imbalance of P and it holds if all maximal chains of P have length of the same parity. This theory also gives lower bounds in the real Schubert calculus through sagbi degeneration of the Grassmannian to a toric variety, and thus recovers a result of Eremenko and Gabrielov.Comment: 31 pages. Minor revision

Face module for realizable Z-matroids

In this work, we define the face module for a realizable matroid over Z. Its Hilbert series is, indeed, the expected specialization of the Grothendieck - Tutte polynomial defined by Fink and Moci. This work will appear in 'Contributions to Discrete Mathematics'Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 1 Tabl

Rowmotion and generalized toggle groups

We generalize the notion of the toggle group, as defined in [P. Cameron-D. Fon-der-Flaass '95] and further explored in [J. Striker-N. Williams '12], from the set of order ideals of a poset to any family of subsets of a finite set. We prove structure theorems for certain finite generalized toggle groups, similar to the theorem of Cameron and Fon-der-Flaass in the case of order ideals. We apply these theorems and find other results on generalized toggle groups in the following settings: chains, antichains, and interval-closed sets of a poset; independent sets, vertex covers, acyclic subgraphs, and spanning subgraphs of a graph; matroids and convex geometries. We generalize rowmotion, an action studied on order ideals in [P. Cameron-D. Fon-der-Flaass '95] and [J. Striker-N. Williams '12], to a map we call cover-closure on closed sets of a closure operator. We show that cover-closure is bijective if and only if the set of closed sets is isomorphic to the set of order ideals of a poset, which implies rowmotion is the only bijective cover-closure map.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, final journal versio

Counting smaller elements in the Tamari and m-Tamari lattices

We introduce new combinatorial objects, the interval- posets, that encode intervals of the Tamari lattice. We then find a combinatorial interpretation of the bilinear operator that appears in the functional equation of Tamari intervals described by Chapoton. Thus, we retrieve this functional equation and prove that the polynomial recursively computed from the bilinear operator on each tree T counts the number of trees smaller than T in the Tamari order. Then we show that a similar m + 1-linear operator is also used in the functionnal equation of m-Tamari intervals. We explain how the m-Tamari lattices can be interpreted in terms of m+1-ary trees or a certain class of binary trees. We then use the interval-posets to recover the functional equation of m-Tamari intervals and to prove a generalized formula that counts the number of elements smaller than or equal to a given tree in the m-Tamari lattice.Comment: 46 pages + 3 pages of code appendix, 27 figures. Long version of arXiv:1212.0751. To appear in Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series

Paths to Understanding Birational Rowmotion on Products of Two Chains

Birational rowmotion is an action on the space of assignments of rational functions to the elements of a finite partially-ordered set (poset). It is lifted from the well-studied rowmotion map on order ideals (equivariantly on antichains) of a poset $P$, which when iterated on special posets, has unexpectedly nice properties in terms of periodicity, cyclic sieving, and homomesy (statistics whose averages over each orbit are constant) [AST11, BW74, CF95, Pan09, PR13, RuSh12,RuWa15+,SW12, ThWi17, Yil17. In this context, rowmotion appears to be related to Auslander-Reiten translation on certain quivers, and birational rowmotion to $Y$-systems of type $A_m \times A_n$ described in Zamolodchikov periodicity. We give a formula in terms of families of non-intersecting lattice paths for iterated actions of the birational rowmotion map on a product of two chains. This allows us to give a much simpler direct proof of the key fact that the period of this map on a product of chains of lengths $r$ and $s$ is $r+s+2$ (first proved by D.~Grinberg and the second author), as well as the first proof of the birational analogue of homomesy along files for such posets.Comment: 31 pages, to appear in Algebraic Combinatoric