The edge-flipping group of a graph

Let $X=(V,E)$ be a finite simple connected graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges. A configuration is an assignment of one of two colors, black or white, to each edge of $X.$ A move applied to a configuration is to select a black edge $\epsilon\in E$ and change the colors of all adjacent edges of $\epsilon.$ Given an initial configuration and a final configuration, try to find a sequence of moves that transforms the initial configuration into the final configuration. This is the edge-flipping puzzle on $X,$ and it corresponds to a group action. This group is called the edge-flipping group $\mathbf{W}_E(X)$ of $X.$ This paper shows that if $X$ has at least three vertices, $\mathbf{W}_E(X)$ is isomorphic to a semidirect product of $(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^k$ and the symmetric group $S_n$ of degree $n,$ where $k=(n-1)(m-n+1)$ if $n$ is odd, $k=(n-2)(m-n+1)$ if $n$ is even, and $\mathbb{Z}$ is the additive group of integers.Comment: 19 page

Triangle-Free Triangulations, Hyperplane Arrangements and Shifted Tableaux

Flips of diagonals in colored triangle-free triangulations of a convex polygon are interpreted as moves between two adjacent chambers in a certain graphic hyperplane arrangement. Properties of geodesics in the associated flip graph are deduced. In particular, it is shown that: (1) every diagonal is flipped exactly once in a geodesic between distinguished pairs of antipodes; (2) the number of geodesics between these antipodes is equal to twice the number of Young tableaux of a truncated shifted staircase shape.Comment: figure added, plus several minor change

Colorful Associahedra and Cyclohedra

Every n-edge colored n-regular graph G naturally gives rise to a simple abstract n-polytope, the colorful polytope of G, whose 1-skeleton is isomorphic to G. The paper describes colorful polytope versions of the associahedron and cyclohedron. Like their classical counterparts, the colorful associahedron and cyclohedron encode triangulations and flips, but now with the added feature that the diagonals of the triangulations are colored and adjacency of triangulations requires color preserving flips. The colorful associahedron and cyclohedron are derived as colorful polytopes from the edge colored graph whose vertices represent these triangulations and whose colors on edges represent the colors of flipped diagonals.Comment: 21 pp, to appear in Journal Combinatorial Theory

The Canada Day Theorem

The Canada Day Theorem is an identity involving sums of $k \times k$ minors of an arbitrary $n \times n$ symmetric matrix. It was discovered as a by-product of the work on so-called peakon solutions of an integrable nonlinear partial differential equation proposed by V. Novikov. Here we present another proof of this theorem, which explains the underlying mechanism in terms of the orbits of a certain abelian group action on the set of all $k$-edge matchings of the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$.Comment: 16 pages. pdfLaTeX + AMS packages + TikZ. Fixed a hyperlink problem and a few typo

Polynomial-time sortable stacks of burnt pancakes

Pancake flipping, a famous open problem in computer science, can be formalised as the problem of sorting a permutation of positive integers using as few prefix reversals as possible. In that context, a prefix reversal of length k reverses the order of the first k elements of the permutation. The burnt variant of pancake flipping involves permutations of signed integers, and reversals in that case not only reverse the order of elements but also invert their signs. Although three decades have now passed since the first works on these problems, neither their computational complexity nor the maximal number of prefix reversals needed to sort a permutation is yet known. In this work, we prove a new lower bound for sorting burnt pancakes, and show that an important class of permutations, known as "simple permutations", can be optimally sorted in polynomial time.Comment: Accepted pending minor revisio

Hamiltonian cycles in Cayley graphs of imprimitive complex reflection groups

Generalizing a result of Conway, Sloane, and Wilkes for real reflection groups, we show the Cayley graph of an imprimitive complex reflection group with respect to standard generating reflections has a Hamiltonian cycle. This is consistent with the long-standing conjecture that for every finite group, G, and every set of generators, S, of G the undirected Cayley graph of G with respect to S has a Hamiltonian cycle.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures; minor revisions according to referee comments, to appear in Discrete Mathematic

Graph parameters from symplectic group invariants

In this paper we introduce, and characterize, a class of graph parameters obtained from tensor invariants of the symplectic group. These parameters are similar to partition functions of vertex models, as introduced by de la Harpe and Jones, [P. de la Harpe, V.F.R. Jones, Graph invariants related to statistical mechanical models: examples and problems, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B 57 (1993) 207-227]. Yet they give a completely different class of graph invariants. We moreover show that certain evaluations of the cycle partition polynomial, as defined by Martin [P. Martin, Enum\'erations eul\'eriennes dans les multigraphes et invariants de Tutte-Grothendieck, Diss. Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble-INPG; Universit\'e Joseph-Fourier-Grenoble I, 1977], give examples of graph parameters that can be obtained this way.Comment: Some corrections have been made on the basis of referee comments. 21 pages, 1 figure. Accepted in JCT