The $1/3$-$2/3$ Conjecture, originally formulated in 1968, is one of the best-known open problems in the theory of posets, stating that the balance constant (a quantity determined by the linear extensions) of any non-total order is at least $1/3$. By reinterpreting balance constants of posets in terms of convex subsets of the symmetric group, we extend the study of balance constants to convex subsets $C$ of any Coxeter group. Remarkably, we conjecture that the lower bound of $1/3$ still applies in any finite Weyl group, with new and interesting equality cases appearing.
We generalize several of the main results towards the $1/3$-$2/3$ Conjecture to this new setting: we prove our conjecture when $C$ is a weak order interval below a fully commutative element in any acyclic Coxeter group (an generalization of the case of width-two posets), we give a uniform lower bound for balance constants in all finite Weyl groups using a new generalization of order polytopes to this context, and we introduce generalized semiorders for which we resolve the conjecture.
We hope this new perspective may shed light on the proper level of generality in which to consider the $1/3$-$2/3$ Conjecture, and therefore on which methods are likely to be successful in resolving it.
Introduced by Solomon in his 1976 paper, the descent algebra of a finite Coxeter group received significant attention over the past decades. As proved by Gessel, in the case of the symmetric group its structure constants give the comultiplication table for the fundamental basis of quasisymmetric functions. We show that this property actually implies several well known relations linked to the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence and some of its generalisations. We further use the theory of type B quasisymmetric functions introduced by Chow to provide analogue results when the Coxeter group i…
We initiate the study of a class of polytopes, which we coin polypositroids, defined to be those polytopes that are simultaneously generalized permutohedra (or polymatroids) and alcoved polytopes. Whereas positroids are the matroids arising from the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, polypositroids are "positive" polymatroids. We parametrize polypositroids using Coxeter necklaces and balanced graphs, and describe the cone of polypositroids by extremal rays and facet inequalities. We introduce a notion of (W,c)-polypositroid for a finite Weyl group W and a choice of Coxeter element c. We connect…
The reflection arrangement of a Coxeter group is a well known instance of a free hyperplane arrangement. In 2002, Terao showed that equipped with a constant multiplicity each such reflection arrangement gives rise to a free multiarrangement. In this note we show that this multiarrangment satisfies the stronger property of inductive freeness in case the Coxeter group is of type $A$.
This article is concerned with the constants that appear in Harish-Chandra's character formula for stable discrete series of real reductive groups, although it does not require any knowledge about real reductive groups or discrete series. In Harish-Chandra's work the only information we have about these constants is that they are uniquely determined by an inductive property. Later Goresky-Kottwitz-MacPherson and Herb gave different formulas for these constants. In this article we generalize these formulas to the case of arbitrary finite Coxeter groups (in this setting, discrete series no longe…
In a Coxeter group $W$, an element is fully commutative if any two of its reduced expressions can be linked by a series of commutation of adjacent letters. These elements have particularly nice combinatorial properties, and also index a basis of the generalized Temperley--Lieb algebra attached to $W$. We give two results about the sequence counting these elements with respect to their Coxeter length. First we prove that it always satisfies a linear recurrence with constant coefficients, by showing that reduced expressions of fully commutative elements form a regular language. Then we classify …
This paper explores the orbit structure and homomesy (constant averages over orbits) properties of certain actions of toggle groups on the collection of independent sets of a path graph. In particular we prove a generalization of a homomesy conjecture of Propp that for the action of a "Coxeter element" of vertex toggles, the difference of indicator functions of symmetrically-located vertices is 0-mesic. Then we use our analysis to show facts about orbit sizes that are easy to conjecture but nontrivial to prove. Besides its intrinsic interest, this particular combinatorial dynamical system is v…
We prove that for any $K$ and $d$, there exist, for all sufficiently large admissible $v$, a pairwise balanced design PBD$(v,K)$ of dimension $d$ for which all $d$-point-generated flats are bounded by a constant independent of $v$. We also tighten a prior upper bound for $K = \{3,4,5\}$, in which case there are no divisibility restrictions on the number of points. One consequence of this latter result is the construction of latin squares `covered' by small subsquares.
We introduce a family of multi-way Cheeger-type constants $\{h_k^σ, k=1,2,\ldots, n\}$ on a signed graph $Γ=(G,σ)$ such that $h_k^σ=0$ if and only if $Γ$ has $k$ balanced connected components. These constants are switching invariant and bring together in a unified viewpoint a number of important graph-theoretical concepts, including the classical Cheeger constant, those measures of bipartiteness introduced by Desai-Rao, Trevisan, Bauer-Jost, respectively, on unsigned graphs,, and the frustration index (originally called the line index of balance by Harary) on signed graphs. We further unify th…
