Kasteleyn counted the number of domino tilings of a rectangle by considering a mutation of the adjacency matrix: a Kasteleyn matrix K. In this paper we present a generalization of Kasteleyn matrices and a combinatorial interpretation for the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of KK^\ast (which we call the singular polynomial), where K is a generalized Kasteleyn matrix for a planar bipartite graph. We also present a q-version of these ideas and a few results concerning tilings of special regions such as rectangles.
We consider Kasteleyn and Kasteleyn-Percus matrices, which arise in enumerating matchings of planar graphs, up to matrix operations on their rows and columns. If such a matrix is defined over a principal ideal domain, this is equivalent to considering its Smith normal form or its cokernel. Many variations of the enumeration methods result in equivalent matrices. In particular, Gessel-Viennot matrices are equivalent to Kasteleyn-Percus matrices. We apply these ideas to plane partitions and related planar of tilings. We list a number of conjectures, supported by experiments in Maple, about the f…
Maximal minors of Kasteleyn sign matrices on planar bipartite graphs in the disk count dimer configurations with prescribed boundary conditions, and the weighted version of such matrices provides a natural parametrization of the totally non--negative part of real Grassmannians (see Refs. [54,43,44,58,7]). In this paper we provide a geometric interpretation of such variant of Kasteleyn theorem: a signature is Kasteleyn if and only if it is geometric in the sense of Ref. [5]. We apply this geometric characterization to explicitly solve the associated system of relations and provide a new proof t…
Random domino tilings of the Aztec diamond shape exhibit interesting features and some of the statistical properties seen in random matrix theory. As a statistical mechanical model it can be thought of as a dimer model or as a certain random surface. We consider the Aztec diamond with a two-periodic weighting which exhibits all three possible phases that occur in these types of models, often referred to as solid, liquid and gas. To analyze this model, we use entries of the inverse Kasteleyn matrix which give the probability of any configuration of dominoes. A formula for these entries, for thi…
It is shown that a random $(0,1)$ matrix whose rows are independent random vectors of exactly $n/2$ zero components is non-singular with probability $1-O(n^{-C})$ for any $C>0$. The proof uses a non-standard inverse-type Littlewood-Offord result.
In the recent years, the trace norm of graphs has been extensively studied under the name of graph energy. The trace norm is just one of the Ky Fan k-norms, given by the sum of the k largest singular values, which are studied more generally in the present paper. Several relations to chromatic number, spectral radius, spread, and to other fundamental parameters are outlined. Some results are extended to more general matrices.
A tournament is a directed graph resulting from an orientation of the complete graph; so, if $M$ is a tournament's adjacency matrix, then $M + M^T$ is a matrix with $0$s on its diagonal and all other entries equal to $1$. An outstanding question in tournament theory asks to classify the adjacency matrices of tournaments which are singular (or nonsingular). We study this question using the structure of tournaments as graphs, in particular their cycle structure. More specifically, we find, as precisely as possible, the number of cycles of length three that dictates whether the corresponding tour…
The invertibility of LCM matrices and their Hadamard powers have been studied a lot over the years by many authors. Bourque and Ligh conjectured in 1992 that the LCM matrix $[S]=[[x_i, x_j]]$ on any GCD closed set $S=\{x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n\}$ is invertible, but in 1997 this was proven false. However, currently there are many open conjectures concerning LCM matrices and their Hadamard powers presented by Hong. In this paper we utilize lattice-theoretic structures and the Möbius function to explain the singularity of classical LCM matrices and their Hadamard powers. At the same time we end up d…
Let $M_n$ be an $n$ by $n$ random matrix where each entry is +1 or -1 independently with probability 1/2. Our main result implies that the probability that $M_n$ is singular is at most $(1/\sqrt{2} + o(1))^n$, improving on the previous best upper bound of $(3/4 + o(1))^n$ proven by Tao and Vu in arXiv:math/0501313v2. This paper follows a similar approach to the Tao and Vu result, including using a variant of their structure theorem. We also extend this type of exponential upper bound on the probability that a random matrix is singular to a large class of discrete random matrices taking values …
Let $n$ be a large integer and $M_n$ be a random $n$ by $n$ matrix whose entries are i.i.d. Bernoulli random variables (each entry is $\pm 1$ with probability 1/2). We show that the probability that $M_n$ is singular is at most $(3/4 +o(1))^n$, improving an earlier estimate of Kahn, Komlós and Szemerédi, as well as earlier work by the authors. The key new ingredient is the applications of Freiman type inverse theorems and other tools from additive combinatorics.
We study the chromatic polynomial P_G(q) for m \times n square- and triangular-lattice strips of widths 2\leq m \leq 8 with cyclic boundary conditions. This polynomial gives the zero-temperature limit of the partition function for the antiferromagnetic q-state Potts model defined on the lattice G. We show how to construct the transfer matrix in the Fortuin--Kasteleyn representation for such lattices and obtain the accumulation sets of chromatic zeros in the complex q-plane in the limit n\to\infty. We find that the different phases that appear in this model can be characterized by a topological…
We introduce a measure of discrepancy of Hermitian matrices and establish an inequality between the second singular value of a Hermitian matrix and its discrepancy. These results are applied to answer two questions of Fan Chung about graph eigenvalues.
For each $n$, let $M_n$ be an $n\times n$ random matrix with independent $\pm 1$ entries. We show that ${\mathbb P}\{\mbox{$M_n$ is singular}\}=(1/2+o_n(1))^n$, which settles an old problem. Some generalizations are considered.
In this note we describe the singular locus of diagonally-dominant Hermitian matrices with nonnegative diagonal entries over the reals, the complex numbers, and the quaternions. This yields explicit expressions for the probability that such matrices, chosen at random, are singular. For instance, in the case of the identity $n \times n$ matrix perturbed by a symmetric, zero-diagonal, $\{\pm 1/(n-1)\}$-Bernoulli matrix, this probability turns out to be equal to $2^{-(n-1)(n-2)/2}$. As a corollary, we find that the probability for a $n\times n$ symmetric $\{\pm 1\}$-Bernoulli matrix to have eigen…
This papers contains two results concerning random $n \times n$ Bernoulli matrices. First, we show that with probability tending to one the determinant has absolute value $\sqrt {n!} \exp(O(\sqrt(n log n)))$. Next, we prove a new upper bound $.939^n$ on the probability that the matrix is singular. We also give some generalizations to other random matrix models.
It is well known that any nonsingular M-matrix admits an LU factorization into M-matrices (with L and U lower and upper triangular respectively) and any singular M-matrix is permutation similar to an M-matrix which admits an LU factorization into M-matrices. Varga and Cai establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a singular M-matrix (without permutation) to allow an LU factorization with L nonsingular. We generalize these results in two directions. First, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an LU factorization of a singular M-matrix where L and U are both p…
We study the chromatic polynomial P_G(q) for m \times n triangular-lattice strips of widths m <= 12_P, 9_F (with periodic or free transverse boundary conditions, respectively) and arbitrary lengths n (with free longitudinal boundary conditions). The chromatic polynomial gives the zero-temperature limit of the partition function for the q-state Potts antiferromagnet. We compute the transfer matrix for such strips in the Fortuin--Kasteleyn representation and obtain the corresponding accumulation sets of chromatic zeros in the complex q-plane in the limit n\to\infty. We recompute the limiting cur…
An approximate Spielman-Teng theorem for the least singular value $s_n(M_n)$ of a random $n\times n$ square matrix $M_n$ is a statement of the following form: there exist constants $C,c >0$ such that for all $η\geq 0$, $\Pr(s_n(M_n) \leq η) \lesssim n^{C}η+ \exp(-n^{c})$. The goal of this paper is to develop a simple and novel framework for proving such results for discrete random matrices. As an application, we prove an approximate Spielman-Teng theorem for $\{0,1\}$-valued matrices, each of whose rows is an independent vector with exactly $n/2$ zero components. This improves on previous work…
Let $M_n$ denote a random symmetric $n$ by $n$ matrix, whose upper diagonal entries are iid Bernoulli random variables (which take value -1 and 1 with probability 1/2). Improving the earlier result by Costello, Tao and Vu, we show that $M_n$ is non-singular with probability $1-O(n^{-C})$ for any positive constant $C$. The proof uses an inverse Littlewood-Offord result for quadratic forms, which is of interest of its own.
We study the chromatic polynomials (= zero-temperature antiferromagnetic Potts-model partition functions) P_G(q) for m \times n rectangular subsets of the square lattice, with m \le 8 (free or periodic transverse boundary conditions) and n arbitrary (free longitudinal boundary conditions), using a transfer matrix in the Fortuin-Kasteleyn representation. In particular, we extract the limiting curves of partition-function zeros when n \to\infty, which arise from the crossing in modulus of dominant eigenvalues (Beraha-Kahane-Weiss theorem). We also provide evidence that the Beraha numbers B_2,B_3…
In this paper, we introduce and analyze a new operation $\circ_{R}$ which mixes two distributions $Ω$ and $Ω'$ via a random orthogonal matrix. In particular, we take $Ω\circ_R Ω'$ to be the limit as $n \to \infty$ of the distribution of singular values of $DRD'$ where $D$ and $D'$ are $n \times n$ diagonal matrices whose diagonal entries have distributions $Ω$ and $Ω'$ respectively and $R$ is a random $n \times n$ orthogonal matrix. We show that $\circ_R$ has several nice properties. We first observe that $\circ_R$ is commutative and associative and compute the moments of $Ω\circ_R Ω'$ in term…
We consider Gaussian elliptic random matrices $X$ of a size $N \times N$ with parameter $ρ$, i.e., matrices whose pairs of entries $(X_{ij}, X_{ji})$ are mutually independent Gaussian vectors, $E X_{ij} = 0$, $E X^2_{ij} = 1$ and $E X_{ij} X_{ji} = ρ$. We are interested in the asymptotic distribution of eigenvalues of the matrix $W =\frac{1}{N^2} X^2 X^{*2}$. We have shown that this distribution is defined by its moments and we provide a recurrent relation for these moments. We have proven that the (symmetrized) asymptotic distribution is determined by its free cumulants, which are Narayana po…
Let $P(d)$ be the probability that a random 0/1-matrix of size $d \times d$ is singular, and let $E(d)$ be the expected number of 0/1-vectors in the linear subspace spanned by d-1 random independent 0/1-vectors. (So $E(d)$ is the expected number of cube vertices on a random affine hyperplane spanned by vertices of the cube.) We prove that bounds on $P(d)$ are equivalent to bounds on $E(d)$: \[ P(d) = (2^{-d} E(d) + \frac{d^2}{2^{d+1}}) (1 + o(1)). \] We also report about computational experiments pertaining to these numbers.
