A two-sided analogue of the Coxeter complex

For any Coxeter system $(W,S)$ of rank $n$, we introduce an abstract boolean complex (simplicial poset) of dimension $2n-1$ that contains the Coxeter complex as a relative subcomplex. Faces are indexed by triples $(I,w,J)$, where $I$ and $J$ are subsets of the set $S$ of simple generators, and $w$ is a minimal length representative for the parabolic double coset $W_I w W_J$. There is exactly one maximal face for each element of the group $W$. The complex is shellable and thin, which implies the complex is a sphere for the finite Coxeter groups. In this case, a natural refinement of the $h$-polynomial is given by the "two-sided" $W$-Eulerian polynomial, i.e., the generating function for the joint distribution of left and right descents in $W$.Comment: 26 pages, several large tables and figure

On the number of matrices and a random matrix with prescribed row and column sums and 0-1 entries

We consider the set Sigma(R,C) of all mxn matrices having 0-1 entries and prescribed row sums R=(r_1, ..., r_m) and column sums C=(c_1, ..., c_n). We prove an asymptotic estimate for the cardinality |Sigma(R, C)| via the solution to a convex optimization problem. We show that if Sigma(R, C) is sufficiently large, then a random matrix D in Sigma(R, C) sampled from the uniform probability measure in Sigma(R,C) with high probability is close to a particular matrix Z=Z(R,C) that maximizes the sum of entropies of entries among all matrices with row sums R, column sums C and entries between 0 and 1. Similar results are obtained for 0-1 matrices with prescribed row and column sums and assigned zeros in some positions.Comment: 26 pages, proofs simplified, results strengthene

Combinatorics and Geometry of Transportation Polytopes: An Update

A transportation polytope consists of all multidimensional arrays or tables of non-negative real numbers that satisfy certain sum conditions on subsets of the entries. They arise naturally in optimization and statistics, and also have interest for discrete mathematics because permutation matrices, latin squares, and magic squares appear naturally as lattice points of these polytopes. In this paper we survey advances on the understanding of the combinatorics and geometry of these polyhedra and include some recent unpublished results on the diameter of graphs of these polytopes. In particular, this is a thirty-year update on the status of a list of open questions last visited in the 1984 book by Yemelichev, Kovalev and Kravtsov and the 1986 survey paper of Vlach.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figure