Frieze patterns of numbers, introduced in the early 70's by Coxeter, are currently attracting much interest due to connections with the recent theory of cluster algebras. The present paper aims to review the original work of Coxeter and the new developments around the notion of frieze, focusing on the representation theoretic, geometric and combinatorial approaches.
Friezes with coefficients are maps assigning numbers to the edges and diagonals of a regular polygon such that all Ptolemy relations for crossing diagonals are satisfied. Among these, the classic Conway-Coxeter friezes are the ones where all values are natural numbers and all edges have value 1. Every subpolygon of a Conway-Coxeter frieze yields a frieze with coefficients over the natural numbers. In this paper we give a complete arithmetic criterion for which friezes with coefficients appear as subpolygons of Conway-Coxeter friezes. This generalizes a result of our earlier paper with Peter Jo…
Coxeter defined the notion of frieze pattern, and Conway and Coxeter proved that triangulations of polygons are in bijection with integral frieze patterns. We show a $p$-angulated generalisation involving non-integral frieze patterns. We also show that polygon dissections give rise to even more general non-integral frieze patterns.
We count the number of Coxeter's friezes over a finite field. Our method uses geometric realizations of the spaces of friezes in a certain completion of the classical moduli space $\mathcal{M}_{0,n}$ allowing repeated points in the configurations. Counting points in the completed moduli space over a finite field is related to the enumeration problem of counting partitions of cyclically ordered set of points into subsets containing no consecutive points. In Appendix we provide an elementary solution for this enumeration problem.
We study a $2 \times 2$ matrix equation arising naturally in the theory of Coxeter frieze patterns. It is formulated in terms of the generators of the group $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ and is closely related to continued fractions. It appears in a number of different areas, for example, toric varieties. We count its positive solutions, obtaining a series of integer sequences, some known and some new. This extends classical work of Conway and Coxeter proving that the first of these sequences is the Catalan numbers.
We explain the notion of "$q$-deformed real numbers" introduced in our previous work and overview their main properties. We will also introduce $q$-deformed Conway-Coxeter friezes.
The notion of $SL_2$-tiling is a generalization of that of classical Coxeter-Conway frieze pattern. We classify doubly antiperiodic $SL_2$-tilings that contain a rectangular domain of positive integers. Every such $SL_2$-tiling corresponds to a pair of frieze patterns and a unimodular $2\times2$-matrix with positive integer coefficients. We relate this notion to triangulated $n$-gons in the Farey graph.
In this survey article we explain the intricate links between Conway-Coxeter friezes and cluster combinatorics. More precisely, we provide a formula, relying solely on the shape of the frieze, describing how each individual entry in the frieze changes under cluster mutation. Moreover, we provide a combinatorial formula for the number of submodules of a string module, and with that a simple way to compute the frieze associated to a fixed cluster tilting object in a cluster category of Dynkin type $A$ in the sense of Caldero and Chapoton.
Conway and Coxeter introduced frieze patterns in 1973 and classified them via triangulated polygons. The determinant of the matrix associated to a frieze table was computed explicitly by Broline, Crowe and Isaacs in 1974, a result generalized 2012 by Baur and Marsh in the context of cluster algebras of type A. Higher angulations of polygons and associated generalized frieze patterns were studied in a joint paper with Holm and Jørgensen. Here we take these results further; we allow arbitrary dissections and introduce polynomially weighted walks around such dissected polygons. The corresponding …
Frieze patterns, as introduced by Coxeter in the 1970's, are closely related to cluster algebras without coefficients. A suitable generalization of frieze patterns, linked to cluster algebras with coefficients, has only briefly appeared in an unpublished manuscript by Propp. In this paper we study these frieze patterns with coefficients systematically and prove various fundamental results, generalizing classic results for frieze patterns. As a consequence we see how frieze patterns with coefficients can be obtained from classic frieze patterns by cutting out subpolygons from the triangulated p…
We consider the variant of Coxeter-Conway frieze patterns called 2-frieze. We prove that there exist infinitely many closed integral 2-friezes (i.e. containing only positive integers) provided the width of the array is bigger than 4. We introduce operations on the integral 2-friezes generating bigger or smaller closed integral 2-friezes.
The famous theorem of Conway and Coxeter on frieze patterns gave a geometric interpretation to integral friezes via triangulations of polygons. In this article, we review this result and show some of the development it has led to. The last decade has seen a lot of activities on friezes. One reason behind this is the connection to cluster combinatorics.
A frieze is an array of numbers obeying the unimodular rule. Coxeter showed that a frieze with integer entries corresponds to a triangulation. Recently, Holm and Jørgenson introduced friezes of type $Λ_p$ which correspond to $p$-angulations of a polygon. In this paper we explore the connection between these two types of friezes; in particular we show that the friezes of type $Λ_p$ for $p=4$ and $p=6$ contain integral friezes within them. We also consider the relationships with Farey graphs.
Frieze patterns (in the sense of Conway and Coxeter) are in close connection to triangulations of polygons. Broline, Crowe and Isaacs have assigned a symmetric matrix to each polygon triangulation and computed the determinant. In this paper we consider d-angulations of polygons and generalize the combinatorial algorithm for computing the entries in the associated symmetric matrices; we compute their determinants and the Smith normal forms. It turns out that both are independent of the particular d-angulation, the determinant is a power of d-1, and the elementary divisors only take values d-1 a…
We introduce a new class of friezes which is related to symplectic geometry. On the algebraic and combinatrics sides, this variant of friezes is related to the cluster algebras involving the Dynkin diagrams of type ${\rm C}_{2}$ and ${\rm A}_{m}$. On the geometric side, they are related to the moduli space of Lagrangian configurations of points in the 4-dimensional symplectic space introduced in [Conley C.H., Ovsienko V., Math. Ann. 375 (2019), 1105-1145]. Symplectic friezes share similar combinatorial properties to those of Coxeter friezes and SL-friezes.
Given two Coxeter's frieze patterns with the same width and consisting of positive numbers, choose a row and consider the periodic sequence of the differences of the respective entries of the two friezes. We ask for which rows this sequence must change sign at least four times over the period. We prove that this is the case for the first and for the second non-trivial rows, and that this is true, for all rows, for an infinitesimal version of the question. The article also contains expository material on the four vertex theorem and on Coxeter's frieze patterns.
Originally studied by Conway and Coxeter, friezes appeared in various recreational mathematics publications in the 1970s. More recently, in 2015, Baur, Parsons, and Tschabold constructed periodic infinite friezes and related them to matching numbers in the once-punctured disk and annulus. In this paper, we study such infinite friezes with an eye towards cluster algebras of type D and affine A, respectively. By examining infinite friezes with Laurent polynomial entries, we discover new symmetries and formulas relating the entries of this frieze to one another. Lastly, we also present a correspo…
Motivated by computational geometry of point configurations on the Euclidean plane, and by the theory of cluster algebras of type A, we introduce and study Heronian friezes, the Euclidean analogues of Coxeter's frieze patterns. We prove that a generic Heronian frieze possesses the glide symmetry (hence is periodic), and establish the appropriate version of the Laurent phenomenon. For a closely related family of Cayley-Menger friezes, we identify an algebraic condition of coherence, which all friezes of geometric origin satisfy. This yields an unambiguous propagation rule for coherent Cayley-Me…
Frieze patterns have been introduced by Coxeter in the 1970's and have recently attracted renewed interest due to their close connection with Fomin-Zelevinsky's cluster algebras. Frieze patterns can be interpreted as assignments of values to the diagonals of a triangulated polygon satisfying certain conditions for crossing diagonals (Ptolemy relations). Weak friezes, as introduced by Canakci and Jorgensen, are generalizing this concept by allowing to glue dissected polygons so that the Ptolemy relations only have to be satisfied for crossings involving one of the gluing diagonals. To any friez…
We introduce a supersymmetric analog of the classical Coxeter frieze patterns. Our approach is based on the relation with linear difference operators. We define supersymmetric analogs of linear difference operators called Hill's operators. The space of these "superfriezes" is an algebraic supervariety, which is isomorphic to the space of supersymmetric second order difference equations, called Hill's equations.
We introduce a quantisation of the Coxeter-Conway frieze patterns and prove that they realise quantum cluster variables in quantum cluster algebras associated with linearly oriented Dynkin quivers of type A. As an application, we obtain the explicit polynomials arising from the lower bound phenomenon in these quantum cluster algebras.
Broline, Crowe and Isaacs have computed the determinant of a matrix associated to a Conway-Coxeter frieze pattern. We generalise their result to the corresponding frieze pattern of cluster variables arising from the Fomin-Zelevinsky cluster algebra of type A. We give a representation-theoretic interpretation of this result in terms of certain configurations of indecomposable objects in the root category of type A.
We study the space of 2-frieze patterns generalizing that of the classical Coxeter-Conway frieze patterns. The geometric realization of this space is the space of n-gons (in the projective plane and in 3-dimensional vector space) which is a close relative of the moduli space of genus 0 curves with n marked points. We show that the space of 2-frieze patterns is a cluster manifold and study its algebraic and arithmetic properties.
We study (tame) frieze patterns over subsets of the complex numbers, with particular emphasis on the corresponding quiddity cycles. We provide new general transformations for quiddity cycles of frieze patterns. As one application, we present a combinatorial model for obtaining the quiddity cycles of all tame frieze patterns over the integers (with zero entries allowed), generalising the classic Conway-Coxeter theory. This model is thus also a model for the set of specializations of cluster algebras of Dynkin type $A$ in which all cluster variables are integers. Moreover, we address the questio…
This article, based on joint work with Gabriel Carroll, Andy Itsara, Ian Le, Gregg Musiker, Gregory Price, Dylan Thurston, and Rui Viana, presents a combinatorial model based on perfect matchings that explains the symmetries of the numerical arrays that Conway and Coxeter dubbed frieze patterns. This matchings model is a combinatorial interpretation of Fomin and Zelevinsky's cluster algebras of type A. One can derive from the matchings model an enumerative meaning for the Markoff numbers, and prove that the associated Laurent polynomials have positive coefficients as was conjectured (much more…