On set systems with restricted intersections modulo p and p-ary t-designs

We consider bounds on the size of families ℱ of subsets of a v-set subject to restrictions modulo a prime p on the cardinalities of the pairwise intersections. We improve the known bound when ℱ is allowed to contain sets of different sizes, but only in a special case. We show that if the bound for uniform families ℱ holds with equality, then ℱ is the set of blocks of what we call a p-ary t-design for certain values of t. This motivates us to make a few observations about p-ary t-designs for their own sake

Stable Intersections of Tropical Varieties

We give several characterizations of stable intersections of tropical cycles and establish their fundamental properties. We prove that the stable intersection of two tropical varieties is the tropicalization of the intersection of the classical varieties after a generic rescaling. A proof of Bernstein's theorem follows from this. We prove that the tropical intersection ring of tropical cycle fans is isomorphic to McMullen's polytope algebra. It follows that every tropical cycle fan is a linear combination of pure powers of tropical hypersurfaces, which are always realizable. We prove that every stable intersection of constant coefficient tropical varieties defined by prime ideals is connected through codimension one. We also give an example of a realizable tropical variety that is connected through codimension one but whose stable intersection with a hyperplane is not.Comment: Revised version, to appear in Journal of Algebraic Combinatoric

Submodular Minimization Under Congruency Constraints

Submodular function minimization (SFM) is a fundamental and efficiently solvable problem class in combinatorial optimization with a multitude of applications in various fields. Surprisingly, there is only very little known about constraint types under which SFM remains efficiently solvable. The arguably most relevant non-trivial constraint class for which polynomial SFM algorithms are known are parity constraints, i.e., optimizing only over sets of odd (or even) cardinality. Parity constraints capture classical combinatorial optimization problems like the odd-cut problem, and they are a key tool in a recent technique to efficiently solve integer programs with a constraint matrix whose subdeterminants are bounded by two in absolute value. We show that efficient SFM is possible even for a significantly larger class than parity constraints, by introducing a new approach that combines techniques from Combinatorial Optimization, Combinatorics, and Number Theory. In particular, we can show that efficient SFM is possible over all sets (of any given lattice) of cardinality r mod m, as long as m is a constant prime power. This covers generalizations of the odd-cut problem with open complexity status, and with relevance in the context of integer programming with higher subdeterminants. To obtain our results, we establish a connection between the correctness of a natural algorithm, and the inexistence of set systems with specific combinatorial properties. We introduce a general technique to disprove the existence of such set systems, which allows for obtaining extensions of our results beyond the above-mentioned setting. These extensions settle two open questions raised by Geelen and Kapadia [Combinatorica, 2017] in the context of computing the girth and cogirth of certain types of binary matroids

Characteristic and Ehrhart polynomials

Let A be a subspace arrangement and let chi(A,t) be the characteristic polynomial of its intersection lattice L(A). We show that if the subspaces in A are taken from L(B_n), where B_n is the type B Weyl arrangement, then chi(A,t) counts a certain set of lattice points. One can use this result to study the partial factorization of chi(A,t) over the integers and the coefficients of its expansion in various bases for the polynomial ring R[t]. Next we prove that the characteristic polynomial of any Weyl hyperplane arrangement can be expressed in terms of an Ehrhart quasi-polynomial for its affine Weyl chamber. Note that our first result deals with all subspace arrangements embedded in B_n while the second deals with all finite Weyl groups but only their hyperplane arrangements.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, Latex, to be published in J. Alg. Combin. see related papers at http://www.math.msu.edu/~saga