A remarkable coincidence has led to the discovery of a family of packings of (m^2+m-2) m/2-dimensional subspaces of m-dimensional space, whenever m is a power of 2. These packings meet the ``orthoplex bound'' and are therefore optimal.
By using totally isotropic subspaces in an orthogonal space Omega^{+}(2i,2), several infinite families of packings of 2^k-dimensional subspaces of real 2^i-dimensional space are constructed, some of which are shown to be optimal packings. A certain Clifford group underlies the construction and links this problem with Barnes-Wall lattices, Kerdock sets and quantum-error-correcting codes.
This paper addresses the question: how should N n-dimensional subspaces of m-dimensional Euclidean space be arranged so that they are as far apart as possible? The results of extensive computations for modest values of N, n, m are described, as well as a reformulation of the problem that was suggested by these computations. The reformulation gives a way to describe n-dimensional subspaces of m-space as points on a sphere in dimension (m-1)(m+2)/2, which provides a (usually) lower-dimensional representation than the Pluecker embedding, and leads to a proof that many of the new packings are opti…
Recently, Balogh, Kostochka and Liu in [Packing chromatic number of cubic graphs, Discrete Math.~341 (2018) 474--483] answered in negative the question that was posed in several earlier papers whether the packing chromatic number is bounded in the class of graphs with maximum degree $3$. In this note, we present an explicit infinite family of subcubic graphs with unbounded packing chromatic number.
The Grassmannian $\mathcal{G}_q(n,k)$ is the set of all $k$-dimensional subspaces of the vector space $\mathbb{F}_q^n$. Kötter and Kschischang showed that codes in Grassmannian space can be used for error-correction in random network coding. On the other hand, these codes are $q$-analogs of codes in the Johnson scheme, i.e., constant dimension codes. These codes of the Grassmannian $\mathcal{G}_q(n,k)$ also form a family of $q$-analogs of block designs and they are called subspace designs. In this paper, we examine one of the last families of $q$-analogs of block designs which was not consider…
How should you choose a good set of (say) 48 planes in four dimensions? More generally, how do you find packings in Grassmannian spaces? In this article I give a brief introduction to the work that I have been doing on this problem in collaboration with A. R. Calderbank, J. H. Conway, R. H. Hardin, E. M. Rains and P. W. Shor. We have found many nice examples of specific packings (70 4-spaces in 8-space, for instance), several general constructions, and an embedding theorem which shows that a packing in Grassmannian space G(m,n) is a subset of a sphere in R^D, where D = (m+2)(m-1)/2, and leads …
We study the combinatorics of Gröbner degenerations of Grassmannians and the Schubert varieties inside them. We provide a family of binomial ideals whose combinatorics is governed by tableaux induced by matching fields in the sense of Sturmfels and Zelevinsky. We prove that these ideals are all quadratically generated and they yield a SAGBI basis of the Plücker algebra. This leads to a new family of toric degenerations of Grassmannians. Moreover, we apply our results to construct a family of Gröbner degenerations of Schubert varieties inside Grassmannians. We provide a complete characterizatio…
Let $\mathcal G$ be a separable family of graphs. Then for all positive constants $ε$ and $Δ$ and for every sufficiently large integer $n$, every sequence $G_1,\dotsc,G_t\in\mathcal G$ of graphs of order $n$ and maximum degree at most $Δ$ such that $e(G_1)+\dotsb+e(G_t) \leq (1-ε)\binom{n}{2}$ packs into $K_n$. This improves results of Böttcher, Hladký, Piguet, and Taraz when $\mathcal G$ is the class of trees and of Messuti, Rödl, and Schacht in the case of a general separable family. The result also implies approximate versions of the Oberwolfach problem and of the Tree Packing Conjecture of…
A linear system is a pair $(X,\mathcal{F})$ where $\mathcal{F}$ is a finite family of subsets on a ground set $X$, and it satisfies that $|A\cap B|\leq 1$ for every pair of distinct subsets $A,B \in \mathcal{F}$. As an example of a linear system are the straight line systems, which family of subsets are straight line segments on $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. By $τ$ and $ν_2$ we denote the size of the minimal transversal and the 2--packing numbers of a linear system respectively. A natural problem is asking about the relationship of these two parameters; it is not difficult to prove that there exists a qua…
Let $\mathcal{R}$ be a family of axis-parallel rectangles in the plane. The transversal number $τ(\mathcal{R})$ is the minimum number of points needed to pierce all the rectangles. The independence number $ν(\mathcal{R})$ is the maximum number of pairwise disjoint rectangles. Given a positive real number $r$, we say that $\mathcal{R}$ is an r-bounded family if, for any rectangle in $\mathcal{R}$, the aspect ratio of the longer side over the shorter side is at most $r$. Gyárfás and Lehel asked if it is possible to bound the transversal number $τ(\mathcal{R})$ with a linear function of the indep…
We use group schemes to construct optimal packings of lines through the origin. In this setting, optimal line packings are naturally characterized using representation theory, which in turn leads to a necessary integrality condition for the existence of equiangular central group frames. We conclude with an infinite family of optimal line packings using the group schemes associated with certain Suzuki 2-groups, specifically, extensions of Heisenberg groups. Notably, this is the first known infinite family of equiangular tight frames generated by representations of nonabelian groups.
László Fejes Tóth and Aladár Heppes proposed the following generalization of the kissing number problem. Given a ball in $\mathbb{R}^d$, consider a family of balls touching it, and another family of balls touching the first family. Find the maximal possible number of balls in this arrangement, provided that no two balls intersect by interiors, and all balls are congruent. They showed that the answer for disks on the plane is $19$. They also conjectured that if there are three families of disks instead of two, the answer is $37$. In this paper we confirm this conjecture.
The construction of optimal line packings in real or complex Euclidean spaces has shown to be a tantalizingly difficult task, because it includes the problem of finding maximal sets of equiangular lines. In the regime where equiangular lines are not possible, some optimal packings are known, for example, those achieving the orthoplex bound related to maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases. In this paper, we investigate the packing of subspaces instead of lines and determine the implications of maximality in this context. We leverage the existence of real or complex maximal mutually unbiased b…
Richardson varieties are obtained as intersections of Schubert and opposite Schubert varieties. We provide a new family of toric degenerations of Richardson varieties inside Grassmannians by studying Gröbner degenerations of their corresponding ideals. These degenerations are parametrised by block diagonal matching fields in the sense of Sturmfels-Zelevinsky. We associate a weight vector to each block diagonal matching field and study its corresponding initial ideal. In particular, we characterise when such ideals are toric, hence providing a family of toric degenerations for Richardson variet…
Let R be a family of n axis-parallel rectangles with packing number p-1, meaning that among any p of the rectangles, there are two with a non-empty intersection. We show that the union complexity of R is at most O(n+p^2), and that the (<=k)-level complexity of R is at most O(kn+k^2p^2). Both upper bounds are tight.
Let M be a symplectic-toric manifold of dimension at least four. This paper investigates the so called symplectic ball packing problem in the toral equivariant setting. We show that the set of toric symplectic ball packings of M admits the structure of a convex polytope. Previous work of the first author shows that up to equivalence, only CP^1 x CP^1 and CP^2 admit density one packings when n=2 and only CP^n admits density one packings when n>2. In contrast, we show that for a fixed n>=2 and each r in (0, 1), there are uncountably many inequivalent 2n-dimensional symplectic-toric manifolds wit…
Two constructions of lattice packings of $ n $-dimensional cross-polytopes ($ \ell_1 $ balls) are described, the density of which exceeds that of any prior construction by a factor of at least $ 2^{\frac{n}{\ln n}(1 + o(1))} $ when $ n \to \infty $. The first family of lattices is explicit and is obtained by applying Construction A to a class of Reed-Solomon codes. The second family has subexponential construction complexity and is based on the notion of Sidon sets in finite Abelian groups. The construction based on Sidon sets also gives the highest known asymptotic density of packing discrete…
We devise constant-factor approximation algorithms for finding as many disjoint cycles as possible from a certain family of cycles in a given planar or bounded-genus graph. Here disjoint can mean vertex-disjoint or edge-disjoint, and the graph can be undirected or directed. The family of cycles under consideration must satisfy two properties: it must be uncrossable and allow for an oracle access that finds a weight-minimal cycle in that family for given nonnegative edge weights or (in planar graphs) the union of all remaining cycles in that family after deleting a given subset of edges. Our se…