The Transcendence Degree over a Ring

For a finitely generated algebra over a field, the transcendence degree is known to be equal to the Krull dimension. The aim of this paper is to generalize this result to algebras over rings. A new definition of the transcendence degree of an algebra A over a ring R is given by calling elements of A algebraically dependent if they satisfy an algebraic equation over R whose trailing coefficient, with respect to some monomial ordering, is 1. The main result is that for a finitely generated algebra over a Noetherian Jacobson ring, the transcendence degree is equal to the Krull dimension

On reconstructing n-point configurations from the distribution of distances or areas

One way to characterize configurations of points up to congruence is by considering the distribution of all mutual distances between points. This paper deals with the question if point configurations are uniquely determined by this distribution. After giving some counterexamples, we prove that this is the case for the vast majority of configurations. In the second part of the paper, the distribution of areas of sub-triangles is used for characterizing point configurations. Again it turns out that most configurations are reconstructible from the distribution of areas, though there are counterexamples.Comment: 21 pages, late

Lossless Representation of Graphs using Distributions

We consider complete graphs with edge weights and/or node weights taking values in some set. In the first part of this paper, we show that a large number of graphs are completely determined, up to isomorphism, by the distribution of their sub-triangles. In the second part, we propose graph representations in terms of one-dimensional distributions (e.g., distribution of the node weights, sum of adjacent weights, etc.). For the case when the weights of the graph are real-valued vectors, we show that all graphs, except for a set of measure zero, are uniquely determined, up to isomorphism, from these distributions. The motivating application for this paper is the problem of browsing through large sets of graphs.Comment: 19 page

Computing invariants of algebraic group actions in arbitrary characteristic

Let G be an affine algebraic group acting on an affine variety X. We present an algorithm for computing generators of the invariant ring K[X]^G in the case where G is reductive. Furthermore, we address the case where G is connected and unipotent, so the invariant ring need not be finitely generated. For this case, we develop an algorithm which computes K[X]^G in terms of a so-called colon-operation. From this, generators of K[X]^G can be obtained in finite time if it is finitely generated. Under the additional hypothesis that K[X] is factorial, we present an algorithm that finds a quasi-affine variety whose coordinate ring is K[X]^G. Along the way, we develop some techniques for dealing with non-finitely generated algebras. In particular, we introduce the finite generation locus ideal.Comment: 43 page