141 research outputs found
The number of directed k-convex polyominoes
We present a new method to obtain the generating functions for directed
convex polyominoes according to several different statistics including: width,
height, size of last column/row and number of corners. This method can be used
to study different families of directed convex polyominoes: symmetric
polyominoes, parallelogram polyominoes. In this paper, we apply our method to
determine the generating function for directed k-convex polyominoes. We show it
is a rational function and we study its asymptotic behavior
Relaxation Height in Energy Landscapes: an Application to Multiple Metastable States
The study of systems with multiple (not necessarily degenerate) metastable
states presents subtle difficulties from the mathematical point of view related
to the variational problem that has to be solved in these cases. We introduce
the notion of relaxation height in a general energy landscape and we prove
sufficient conditions which are valid even in presence of multiple metastable
states. We show how these results can be used to approach the problem of
multiple metastable states via the use of the modern theories of metastability.
We finally apply these general results to the Blume--Capel model for a
particular choice of the parameters ensuring the existence of two multiple, and
not degenerate in energy, metastable states
A closed formula for the number of convex permutominoes
In this paper we determine a closed formula for the number of convex
permutominoes of size n. We reach this goal by providing a recursive generation
of all convex permutominoes of size n+1 from the objects of size n, according
to the ECO method, and then translating this construction into a system of
functional equations satisfied by the generating function of convex
permutominoes. As a consequence we easily obtain also the enumeration of some
classes of convex polyominoes, including stack and directed convex
permutominoes
The excedances and descents of bi-increasing permutations
Starting from some considerations we make about the relations between certain
difference statistics and the classical permutation statistics we study
permutations whose inversion number and excedance difference coincide. It turns
out that these (so-called bi-increasing) permutations are just the 321-avoiding
ones. The paper investigates their excedance and descent structure. In
particular, we find some nice combinatorial interpretations for the
distribution coefficients of the number of excedances and descents,
respectively, and their difference analogues over the bi-increasing
permutations in terms of parallelogram polyominoes and 2-Motzkin paths. This
yields a connection between restricted permutations, parallelogram polyominoes,
and lattice paths that reveals the relations between several well-known
bijections given for these objects (e.g. by Delest-Viennot,
Billey-Jockusch-Stanley, Francon-Viennot, and Foata-Zeilberger). As an
application, we enumerate skew diagrams according to their rank and give a
simple combinatorial proof for a result concerning the symmetry of the joint
distribution of the number of excedances and inversions, respectively, over the
symmetric group.Comment: 36 page
Fast Fencing
We consider very natural "fence enclosure" problems studied by Capoyleas,
Rote, and Woeginger and Arkin, Khuller, and Mitchell in the early 90s. Given a
set of points in the plane, we aim at finding a set of closed curves
such that (1) each point is enclosed by a curve and (2) the total length of the
curves is minimized. We consider two main variants. In the first variant, we
pay a unit cost per curve in addition to the total length of the curves. An
equivalent formulation of this version is that we have to enclose unit
disks, paying only the total length of the enclosing curves. In the other
variant, we are allowed to use at most closed curves and pay no cost per
curve.
For the variant with at most closed curves, we present an algorithm that
is polynomial in both and . For the variant with unit cost per curve, or
unit disks, we present a near-linear time algorithm.
Capoyleas, Rote, and Woeginger solved the problem with at most curves in
time. Arkin, Khuller, and Mitchell used this to solve the unit cost
per curve version in exponential time. At the time, they conjectured that the
problem with curves is NP-hard for general . Our polynomial time
algorithm refutes this unless P equals NP
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