In this paper we study three classes of models widely used in physics, computer science and social science: the Chip Firing Game, the Abelian Sandpile Model and the Chip Firing Game on a mutating graph. We study the set of configurations reachable from a given initial configuration, called the configuration space of a model, and try to determine the main properties of such sets. We study the order induced over the configurations by the evolution rule. This makes it possible to compare the power of expression of these models. It is known that the configuration spaces we obtain are lattices, a special kind of partially ordered set. Although the Chip Firing Game on a mutating graph is a generalization of the usual Chip Firing Game, we prove that these models generate exactly the same configuration spaces. We also prove that the class of lattices induced by the Abelian Sandpile Model is strictly included in the class of lattices induced by the Chip Firing Game, but contains the class of distributive lattices, a very well known class.
We investigate Riemann-Roch theory for directed graphs. The Riemann-Roch criteria of Amini and Manjunath is generalized to all integer lattices orthogonal to some positive vector. Using generalized notions of a $v_0$-reduced divisor and Dhar's algorithm we investigate two chip-firing games coming from the rows and columns of the Laplacian of a strongly connected directed graph. We discuss how the "column" chip-firing game is related to directed $\vec{G}$-parking functions and the "row" chip-firing game is related to the sandpile model. We conclude with a discussion of arithmetical graphs, whic…
Hereditary chip-firing models generalize the Abelian sandpile model and the cluster firing model to an exponential family of games induced by covers of the vertex set. This generalization retains some desirable properties, e.g. stabilization is independent of firings chosen and each chip-firing equivalence class contains a unique recurrent configuration. In this paper we present an explicit bijection between the recurrent configurations of a hereditary chip-firing model on a graph and its spanning trees.
The Abelian sandpile process evolves configurations of chips on the integer lattice by toppling any vertex with at least 4 chips, distributing one of its chips to each of its 4 neighbors. When begun from a large stack of chips, the terminal state of the sandpile has a curious fractal structure which has remained unexplained. Using a characterization of the quadratic growths attainable by integer-superharmonic functions, we prove that the sandpile PDE recently shown to characterize the scaling limit of the sandpile admits certain fractal solutions, giving a precise mathematical perspective on t…
We analyze the poset of moves in chip-firing, as defined by Klivans and Liscio. Answering a question of Propp, we show that the move poset forms the join-irreducibles of the poset of configurations. The proof involves a graph augmentation and an analysis of configurations in which only one firing move is available. We then use this framework to analyze the problem of chip-firing on a line, where the move poset is relevant to the problem of labeled chip-firing.
Jim Propp recently proposed a labeled version of chip-firing on a line and conjectured that this process is confluent from some initial configurations. This was proved by Hopkins-McConville-Propp. We reinterpret Propp's labeled chip-firing moves in terms of root systems: a "central-firing" move consists of replacing a weight $λ$ by $λ+α$ for any positive root $α$ that is orthogonal to $λ$. We show that central-firing is always confluent from any initial weight after modding out by the Weyl group, giving a generalization of unlabeled chip-firing on a line to other types. For simply-laced root s…
In 2016, Hopkins, McConville, and Propp proved that labeled chip-firing on a line always leaves the chips in sorted order if the number of chips is even. We present a novel proof of this result. We then apply our methods to resolve a number of related conjectures concerning the confluence of labeled chip-firing systems.
We propose a generalization of the graphical chip-firing model allowing for the redistribution dynamics to be governed by any invertible integer matrix while maintaining the long term critical, superstable, and energy minimizing behavior of the classical model.
We investigate a variant of the chip-firing process on the infinite path graph: rather than treating the chips as indistinguishable, we label them with positive integers. To fire an unstable vertex, i.e. a vertex with more than one chip, we choose any two chips at that vertex and move the lesser-labeled chip to the left and the greater-labeled chip to the right. This labeled version of the chip-firing process exhibits a remarkable confluence property, similar to but subtler than the confluence that prevails for unlabeled chip-firing: when all chips start at the origin and the number of chips i…
We study a particular chip-firing process on an infinite path graph. At any time when there are at least $a+b$ chips at a vertex, $a$ chips fire to the left and $b$ chips fire to the right. We describe the final state of this process when we start with $n$ chips at the origin.
The parallel chip-firing game is an automaton on graphs in which vertices "fire" chips to their neighbors when they have enough chips to do so. The game is always periodic, and we concern ourselves with the firing sequences of vertices. We introduce the concepts of motorized parallel chip-firing games and motor vertices, study the effects of motors connected to a tree and show that motorized games can be transformed into ordinary games if the motors' firing sequences occur in some ordinary game. We then characterize exactly which periodic firing patterns can occur in an ordinary game and state…
Chip-firing and rotor-routing are two well-studied examples of abelian networks. We study the complexity of their respective reachability problems. We show that the rotor-routing reachability problem is decidable in polynomial time, and we give a simple characterization of when a chip-and-rotor configuration is reachable from another one. For chip-firing, it has been known that the reachability problem is in P if we have a class of graphs whose period length is polynomial (for example, Eulerian digraphs). Here we show that in the general case, chip-firing reachability is hard in the sense that…
In this paper, we study the complexity of the chip-firing reachability problem. We show that for Eulerian digraphs, the reachability problem can be decided in strongly polynomial time, even if the digraph has multiple edges. We also show a special case when the reachability problem can be decided in polynomial time for general digraphs: if the target distribution is recurrent restricted to each strongly connected component. As a further positive result, we show that the chip-firing reachability problem is in co-NP for general digraphs. We also show that the chip-firing halting problem is in co…
We study how parallel chip-firing on the complete graph K_n changes behavior as we vary the total number of chips. Surprisingly, the activity of the system, defined as the average number of firings per time step, does not increase smoothly in the number of chips; instead it remains constant over long intervals, punctuated by sudden jumps. In the large n limit we find a "devil's staircase" dependence of activity on the number of chips. The proof proceeds by reducing the chip-firing dynamics to iteration of a self-map of the circle S^1, in such a way that the activity of the chip-firing state eq…
Jim Propp recently introduced a variant of chip-firing on a line where the chips are given distinct integer labels. Hopkins, McConville, and Propp showed that this process is confluent from some (but not all) initial configurations of chips. We recast their set-up in terms of root systems: labeled chip-firing can be seen as a root-firing process which allows the moves $λ\to λ+ α$ for $α\in Φ^{+}$ whenever $\langleλ,α^\vee\rangle = 0$, where $Φ^{+}$ is the set of positive roots of a root system of Type A and $λ$ is a weight of this root system. We are thus motivated to study the exact same root…
We give a rigorous and self-contained survey of the abelian sandpile model and rotor-router model on finite directed graphs, highlighting the connections between them. We present several intriguing open problems.
Let $Γ$ be a finite graph and let $Γ_n$ be the "$n$th cone over $Γ$" (i.e., the join of $Γ$ and the complete graph $K_n$). We study the asymptotic structure of the chip-firing group $\text{Pic}^0(Γ_n)$.
Baker and Norine proved a Riemann--Roch theorem for divisors on undirected graphs. The notions of graph divisor theory are in duality with the notions of the chip-firing game of Björner, Lovász and Shor. We use this connection to prove Riemann--Roch-type results on directed graphs. We give a simple proof for a Riemann--Roch inequality on Eulerian directed graphs, improving a result of Amini and Manjunath. We also study possibilities and impossibilities of Riemann--Roch-type equalities in strongly connected digraphs and give examples. We intend to make the connections of this theory to graph th…
Baker and Norine introduced a graph-theoretic analogue of the Riemann-Roch theory. A central notion in this theory is the rank of a divisor. In this paper we prove that computing the rank of a divisor on a graph is NP-hard. The determination of the rank of a divisor can be translated to a question about a chip-firing game on the same underlying graph. We prove the NP-hardness of this question by relating chip-firing on directed and undirected graphs.
The parallel chip-firing game is a periodic automaton on graphs in which vertices "fire" chips to their neighbors. In 1989, Bitar conjectured that the period of a parallel chip-firing game with n vertices is at most n. Though this conjecture was disproven in 1994 by Kiwi et. al., it has been proven for particular classes of graphs, specifically trees (Bitar and Goles, 1992) and the complete graph K_n (Levine, 2008). We prove Bitar's conjecture for complete bipartite graphs and characterize completely all possible periods for positions of the parallel chip-firing game on such graphs. Furthermor…
Cools, Draisma, Payne, and Robeva proved that generic metric graphs that are "paths of loops" are Brill-Noether general. We show that Brill-Noether generality does not hold for "trees of loops": the only trees of loops that are Brill-Noether general are paths of loops. We study various notions of generality and examine which of these graphs satisfy them.
Aval et al. proved that starting from a critical configuration of a chip- firing game on an undirected graph, one can never achieve a stable configuration by reverse firing any non-empty subsets of its vertices. In this paper, we generalize the result to digraphs with a global sink where reverse firing subsets of vertices is replaced with reverse firing multi-subsets of vertices. Consequently, a combinatorial proof for the duality between critical configurations and superstable configurations on digraphs is given. Finally, by introducing the concept of energy vector assigned to each configurat…
The Abelian sandpile growth model is a diffusion process for configurations of chips placed on vertices of the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$, in which sites with at least 2d chips {\em topple}, distributing 1 chip to each of their neighbors in the lattice, until no more topplings are possible. From an initial configuration consisting of $n$ chips placed at a single vertex, the rescaled stable configuration seems to converge to a particular fractal pattern as $n\to \infty$. However, little has been proved about the appearance of the stable configurations. We use PDE techniques to prove that th…
We show a collection of scripts, called $G$-strongly positive scripts, which is used to recognize critical configurations of a chip firing game (CFG) on a multi-digraph with a global sink. To decrease the time of the process of recognition caused by the stabilization we present an algorithm to find the minimum G-strongly positive script. From that we prove the non-stability of configurations obtained from a critical configuration by firing inversely any non-empty multi-subset of vertices. This result is a generalization of a very recent one by Aval \emph{et.al} which is applied for CFG on undi…
Motivated by the notion of chip-firing on the dual graph of a planar graph, we consider `integral flow chip-firing' on an arbitrary graph $G$. The chip-firing rule is governed by ${\mathcal L}^*(G)$, the dual Laplacian of $G$ determined by choosing a basis for the lattice of integral flows on $G$. We show that any graph admits such a basis so that ${\mathcal L}^*(G)$ is an $M$-matrix, leading to a firing rule on these basis elements that is avalanche finite. This follows from a more general result on bases of integral lattices that may be of independent interest. Our results provide a notion o…
In this paper we explore enumeration problems related to the number of reachable configurations in a chip-firing game on a finite connected graph G. We define an auxiliary notion of debt-reachability and prove that the number of debt-reachable configurations from an initial configuration with c chips on one vertex is a quasipolynomial in c. For the cycle graph C_n, we apply these results to compute a near explicit formula for the number of debt-reachable configurations. We then derive polynomial asymptotic bounds for the number of debt-reachable and reachable configurations, and finally provid…
For a finite index sublattice $L$ of the root lattice $A_{n}$, we construct a deterministic algorithm to deform the lattice ideal $I_L$ to a nearby generic lattice ideal, answering a question posed by Miller and Sturmfels. Our algorithm is based on recent results of Perkinson, Perlman and Wilmes concerning commutative algebraic aspects of chip firing on directed graphs. As an application of our deformation algorithm, we construct a cellular resolution of the lattice ideal $I_L$ by degenerating the Scarf complex of its deformation.
Two classes of avalanche-finite matrices and their critical groups (integer cokernels) are studied from the viewpoint of chip-firing/sandpile dynamics, namely, the Cartan matrices of finite root systems and the McKay-Cartan matrices for finite subgroups G of general linear groups. In the root system case, the recurrent and superstable configurations are identified explicitly and are related to minuscule dominant weights. In the McKay-Cartan case for finite subgroups of the special linear group, the cokernel is related to the abelianization of the subgroup G. In the special case of the classica…
The Chip-firing game is a discrete dynamical system played on a graph, in which chips move along edges according to a simple local rule. Properties of the underlying graph are of course useful to the understanding of the game, but since a conjecture of Biggs that was proved by Merino López, we also know that the study of the Chip-firing game can give insights on the graph. In particular, a strong relation between the partial Tutte polynomial $T_G(1,y)$ and the set of recurrent configurations of a Chip-firing game (with a distinguished sink vertex) has been established for undirected graphs. A …
In this paper we present further studies of recurrent configurations of Chip-firing games on Eulerian directed graphs (simple digraphs), a class on the way from undirected graphs to general directed graphs. A computational problem that arises naturally from this model is to find the minimum number of chips of a recurrent configuration, which we call the minimum recurrent configuration (MINREC) problem. We point out a close relationship between MINREC and the minimum feedback arc set (MINFAS) problem on Eulerian directed graphs, and prove that both problems are NP-hard.
Kirchhoff's matrix-tree theorem states that the number of spanning trees of a graph G is equal to the value of the determinant of the reduced Laplacian of $G$. We outline an efficient bijective proof of this theorem, by studying a canonical finite abelian group attached to $G$ whose order is equal to the value of same matrix determinant. More specifically, we show how one can efficiently compute a bijection between the group elements and the spanning trees of the graph. The main ingredient for computing the bijection is an efficient algorithm for finding the unique $G$-parking function (reduce…
We investigate a special variant of chip-firing, in which we consider an infinite set of rooms on a number line, some of which are occupied by violinists. In a move, we take two violinists in adjacent rooms, and send one of them to the closest unoccupied room to the left and the other to the closest unoccupied room to the right. We classify the different possible final states from repeatedly performing this operation. We introduce numbers $R(N,\ell,x)$ that count labeled recursive rooted trees with $N$ vertices, $\ell$ leaves, and the smallest rooted path ending in $x$. We describe the propert…
In this expository article intended to be accessible to undergraduate students we introduce a finite abelian group that can be associated to any finite connected graph. This group can be defined in an elementary combinatorial way in terms of chip-firing operations, and has been an object of interest in combinatorics, algebraic geometry, statistical physics, and several other areas of mathematics. We will begin with basic definitions and examples and develop a number of properties that can be derived by looking at this group from different angles. Throughout, we will give exercises, some of whi…
We continue our studies of burn-off chip-firing games from [Discrete Math. Theor. Comput. Sci. 15 (2013), no. 1, 121-132; MR3040546] and [Australas. J. Combin. 68 (2017), no. 3, 330-345; MR3656659]. The latter article introduced randomness by choosing successive seeds uniformly from the vertex set of a graph $G$. The length of a game is the number of vertices that fire (by sending a chip to each neighbor and annihilating one chip) as an excited chip configuration passes to a relaxed state. This article determines the probability distribution of the game length in a long sequence of burn-off ga…
In earlier work in collaboration with Pavel Galashin and Thomas McConville we introduced a version of chip-firing for root systems. Our investigation of root system chip-firing led us to define certain polynomials analogous to Ehrhart polynomials of lattice polytopes, which we termed the symmetric and truncated Ehrhart-like polynomials. We conjectured that these polynomials have nonnegative integer coefficients. Here we affirm "half" of this positivity conjecture by providing a positive, combinatorial formula for the coefficients of the symmetric Ehrhart-like polynomials. This formula depends …
