The <i>totally nonnegative Grassmannian</i> is the set of $k$-dimensional subspaces $V$ of ℝ<sup>$n$</sup> whose nonzero Plücker coordinates (i.e. $k × k$ minors of a $k × n$ matrix whose rows span $V$) all have the same sign. Total positivity has been much studied in the past two decades from an algebraic, combinatorial, and topological perspective, but first arose in the theory of oscillations in analysis. It was in the latter context that Gantmakher and Krein (1950) and Schoenberg and Whitney (1951) independently showed that a subspace $V$ is totally nonnegative iff every vector in $V$, when viewed as a sequence of $n$ numbers and ignoring any zeros, changes sign fewer than $k$ times. We generalize this result, showing that the vectors in $V$ change sign fewer than $l$ times iff certain sequences of the Plücker coordinates of some <i>generic perturbation</i> of $V$ change sign fewer than $l − k + 1$ times. We give an algorithm which constructs such a generic perturbation. Also, we determine the <i>positroid cell</i> of each totally nonnegative $V$ from sign patterns of vectors in $V$. These results generalize to oriented matroids.
The vertex corona of a vertex of some tiling is the vertex together with the adjacent tiles. A tiling where all vertex coronae are congruent is called monocoronal. We provide a classification of monocoronal tilings in the Euclidean plane and derive a list of all possible symmetry groups of monocoronal tilings. In particular, any monocoronal tiling with respect to direct congruence is crystallographic, whereas any monocoronal tiling with respect to congruence (reflections allowed) is either crystallographic or it has a one-dimensional translation group. Furthermore, bounds on the number of the dimensions of the translation group of monocoronal tilings in higher dimensional Euclidean space are obtained.
Given a reconfigurable system $X$, such as a robot moving on a grid or a set of particles traversing a graph without colliding, the possible positions of $X$ naturally form a cubical complex $\mathcal{S}(X)$. When $\mathcal{S}(X)$ is a CAT(0) space, we can explicitly construct the shortest path between any two points, for any of the four most natural metrics: distance, time, number of moves, and number of steps of simultaneous moves. CAT(0) cubical complexes are in correspondence with posets with inconsistent pairs (PIPs), so we can prove that a state complex $\mathcal{S}(X)$ is CAT(0) by identifying the corresponding PIP. We illustrate this very general strategy with one known and one new example: Abrams and Ghrist's ``positive robotic arm" on a square grid, and the robotic arm in a strip. We then use the PIP as a combinatorial ``remote control" to move these robots efficiently from one position to another.
A function $g$, with domain the natural numbers, is a quasi-polynomial if there exists a period $m$ and polynomials $p_0,p_1,\ldots,p_m-1$ such that $g(t)=p_i(t)$ for $t\equiv i\bmod m$. Quasi-polynomials classically – and ``reasonably'' – appear in Ehrhart theory and in other contexts where one examines a family of polyhedra, parametrized by a variable t, and defined by linear inequalities of the form $a_1x_1+⋯+a_dx_d≤ b(t)$. Recent results of Chen, Li, Sam; Calegari, Walker; and Roune, Woods show a quasi-polynomial structure in several problems where the $a_i$ are also allowed to vary with $t$. We discuss these ``unreasonable'' results and conjecture a general class of sets that exhibit various (eventual) quasi-polynomial behaviors: sets $S_t$ that are defined with quantifiers $(\forall , ∃)$, boolean operations (and, or, not), and statements of the form $a_1(t)x_1+⋯+a_d(t)x_d ≤ b(t)$, where $a_i(t)$ and $b(t)$ are polynomials in $t$. These sets are a generalization of sets defined in the Presburger arithmetic. We prove several relationships between our conjectures, and we prove several special cases of the conjectures.
We obtain a very simple formula for the generating function of bipartite (resp. quasi-bipartite) planar maps with boundaries (holes) of prescribed lengths, which generalizes certain expressions obtained by Eynard in a book to appear. The formula is derived from a bijection due to Bouttier, Di Francesco and Guitter combined with a process (reminiscent of a construction of Pitman) of aggregating connected components of a forest into a single tree.
In this paper, we develop a new method to compute generating functions of the form $NM_τ (t,x,y) = \sum\limits_{n ≥0} {\frac{t^n} {n!}}∑_{σ ∈\mathcal{lNM_{n}(τ )}} x^{LRMin(σ)} y^{1+des(σ )}$ where $τ$ is a permutation that starts with $1, \mathcal{NM_n}(τ )$ is the set of permutations in the symmetric group $S_n$ with no $τ$ -matches, and for any permutation $σ ∈S_n$, $LRMin(σ )$ is the number of left-to-right minima of $σ$ and $des(σ )$ is the number of descents of $σ$ . Our method does not compute $NM_τ (t,x,y)$ directly, but assumes that $NM_τ (t,x,y) = \frac{1}{/ (U_τ (t,y))^x}$ where $U_τ (t,y) = \sum_{n ≥0} U_τ ,n(y) \frac{t^n}{ n!}$ so that $U_τ (t,y) = \frac{1}{ NM_τ (t,1,y)}$. We then use the so-called homomorphism method and the combinatorial interpretation of $NM_τ (t,1,y)$ to develop recursions for the coefficient of $U_τ (t,y)$.
Recently Postnikov gave a combinatorial description of the cells in a totally-nonnegative Grassmannian. These cells correspond to a special class of matroids called positroids. There are many interesting combinatorial objects associated to a positroid. We introduce some recent results, including the generalization and proof of the purity conjecture by Leclerc and Zelevinsky on weakly separated sets.
Permutation tableaux are new objects that were introduced by Postnikov in the context of enumeration of the totally positive Grassmannian cells. They are known to be in bijection with permutations and recently, they have been connected to PASEP model used in statistical physics. Properties of permutation tableaux became a focus of a considerable research activity. In this paper we study properties of basic statistics defined on permutation tableaux. We present a simple and unified approach based on probabilistic techniques and use it to compute the expected values of basic statistics defined on permutation tableaux. We also provide a non―bijective and very simple proof that there are n! permutation tableaux of length n.