We study a new invariant of circular planar electrical networks, well known to phylogeneticists: the circular split system. We use our invariant to answer some open questions about levels of complexity of networks and their related Kalmanson metrics. The key to our analysis is the realization that certain matrices arising from weighted split systems are studied in another guise: the Kron reductions of Laplacian matrices of planar electrical networks. Specifically we show that a response matrix of a circular planar electrical network corresponds to a unique resistance metric obeying the Kalmanson condition, and thus a unique weighted circular split system. Our results allow interchange of methods: phylogenetic reconstruction using theorems about electrical networks, and circuit reconstruction using phylogenetic techniques.
The need for structures capable of accommodating complex evolutionary signals such as those found in, for example, wheat has fueled research into phylogenetic networks. Such structures generalize the standard phylogenetic tree model by also allowing cycles and have been introduced in rooted and unrooted form. In contrast to phylogenetic trees, however, surprisingly little is known about the interplay between both types thus hampering our ability to make much needed progress for rooted phylogenetic networks by drawing on insights from their much better understood unrooted counterparts. Unrooted…
We describe Galois connections which arise between two kinds of combinatorial structures, both of which generalize trees with labelled leaves, and then apply those connections to a family of polytopes. The graphs we study can be imbued with metric properties or associated to vectors. Famous examples are the Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann metric space of phylogenetic trees, and the Balanced Minimal Evolution polytopes of phylogenetic trees described by Eickmeyer, Huggins, Pachter and Yoshida. Recently the space of trees has been expanded to split networks by Devadoss and Petti, while the definition of…
Following de Verdière-Gitler-Vertigan and Curtis-Ingerman-Morrow, we prove a host of new results on circular planar electrical networks. We introduce a poset EP_{n} of electrical networks with n boundary vertices, giving two equivalent characterizations, one combinatorial and the other topological. We then investigate various properties of the EP_{n}, proving that it is graded by number of edges of critical representatives. Finally, we answer various enumerative questions related to EP_{n}, adapting methods of Callan and Stein-Everett.
We discuss several parametrizations of the space of circular planar electrical networks. For any circular planar network we associate a canonical minimal network with the same response matrix, called a "standard" network. The conductances of edges in a standard network can be computed as a biratio of Pfaffians constructed from the response matrix. The conductances serve as coordinates that are compatible with the cell structure of circular planar networks in the sense that one conductance degenerates to 0 or infinity when moving from a cell to a boundary cell. We also show how to test if a net…
A classic problem in computational biology is constructing a phylogenetic tree given a set of distances between n species. In most cases, a tree structure is too constraining. We consider a circular split network, a generalization of a tree in which multiple parallel edges signify divergence. A geometric space of such networks is introduced, forming a natural extension of the work by Billera, Holmes, and Vogtmann on tree space. We explore properties of this space, and show a natural embedding of the compactification of the real moduli space of curves within it.
Phylogenetic networks are notoriously difficult to reconstruct. Here we suggest that it can be useful to view unknown genetic distance along edges in phylogenetic networks as analogous to unknown resistance in electric circuits. This resistance distance, well known in graph theory, turns out to have nice mathematical properties which allow the precise reconstruction of networks. Specifically we show that the resistance distance for a weighted 1-nested network is Kalmanson, and that the unique associated circular split network fully represents the splits of the original phylogenetic network (or…
Curtis-Ingerman-Morrow characterize response matrices for circular planar electrical networks as symmetric square matrices with row sums zero and non-negative circular minors. In this paper, we study this positivity phenomenon more closely, from both algebraic and combinatorial perspectives. Extending work of Postnikov, we introduce electrical positroids, which are the sets of circular minors which can simultaneously be positive in a response matrix. We give a self-contained axiomatic description of these electrical positroids. In the second part of the paper, we discuss a naturally arising ex…
We consider the inverse boundary value problem in the case of discrete electrical networks containing nonlinear (non-ohmic) resistors. Generalizing work of Curtis, Ingerman, Morrow, Colin de Verdiere, Gitler, and Vertigan, we characterize the circular planar graphs for which the inverse boundary value problem has a solution in this generalized non-linear setting. The answer is the same as in the linear setting. Our method of proof never requires that the resistors behave in a continuous or monotone fashion; this allows us to recover signed conductances in many cases. We apply this to the probl…
In this paper we study the inverse Dirichlet-to-Neumann problem for certain cylindrical electrical networks. We define and study a birational transformation acting on cylindrical electrical networks called the electrical $R$-matrix. We use this transformation to formulate a general conjectural solution to this inverse problem on the cylinder. This conjecture extends work of Curtis, Ingerman, and Morrow, and of de Verdière, Gitler, and Vertigan for circular planar electrical networks. We show that our conjectural solution holds for certain "purely cylindrical" networks. Here we apply the grove …
Electrical networks, Grassmannians, and cluster algebras
University of Haifa（海法大学）；Hebrew University（希伯来大学）；National Research University Higher School of Economics（国立研究高等经济学院）；P. G. Demidov Yaroslavl State University（P.G. 杰米多夫雅罗斯拉夫尔国立大学）
We construct a compactification of the space of circular planar electrical networks studied by Curtis-Ingerman-Morrow and De Verdiere-Gitler-Vertigan, using cactus networks. We embed this compactification as a linear slice of the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, and relate Kenyon and Wilson's grove measurements to Postnikov's boundary measurements. Intersections of the slice with the positroid stratification leads to a class of electroid varieties, indexed by matchings. The partial order on matchings arising from electrical networks is shown to be dual to a subposet of affine Bruhat order. Th…
The neighbor-joining algorithm is a popular phylogenetics method for constructing trees from dissimilarity maps. The neighbor-net algorithm is an extension of the neighbor-joining algorithm and is used for constructing split networks. We begin by describing the output of neighbor-net in terms of the tessellation of $\bar{\MM}_{0}^n(\mathbb{R})$ by associahedra. This highlights the fact that neighbor-net outputs a tree in addition to a circular ordering and we explain when the neighbor-net tree is the neighbor-joining tree. A key observation is that the tree constructed in existing implementati…
