Combinatorial enumeration leads to counting generating functions presenting a wide variety of analytic types. Properties of generating functions at singularities encode valuable information regarding asymptotic counting and limit probability distributions present in large random structures. ``Singularity analysis'' reviewed here provides constructive estimates that are applicable in several areas of combinatorics. It constitutes a complex-analytic Tauberian procedure by which combinatorial constructions and asymptotic--probabilistic laws can be systematically related.
We summarize some combinatoric problems solved by the higher Catalan numbers. These problems are generalizations of the combinatoric problems solved by the Catalan numbers. The generating function of the higher Catalan numbers appeared recently as an auxiliary function in enumerating maps and explicit computations of the asymptotic expansion of the partition function of random matrices in the unitary ensemble case. We give combinatoric proofs of the formulas for the number of genus 0 and genus 1 maps.
Introducing irrational enumeration: analytic combinatorics for objects of irrational size
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Strathclyde（斯特拉斯克莱德大学数学与统计系）；Institut Denis Poisson, L’Université d’Orléans（奥尔良大学丹尼斯·普瓦松研究所）
Additive combinatorics is built around the famous theorem by Szemerédi which asserts existence of arithmetic progressions of any length among the integers. There exist several different proofs of the theorem based on very different techniques. Szemerédi's theorem is an existence statement, whereas the ultimate goal in combinatorics is always to make enumeration statements. In this article we develop new methods based on real algebraic geometry to obtain several quantitative statements on the number of arithmetic progressions in fixed density sets. We further discuss the possibility of a genera…
Lattice paths effectively model phenomena in chemistry, physics and probability theory. Asymptotic enumeration of lattice paths is linked with entropy in the physical systems being modeled. Lattice paths restricted to different regions of the plane are well suited to a functional equation approach for exact and asymptotic enumeration. This thesis surveys results on lattice paths under various restrictions, with an emphasis on lattice paths in the quarter plane. For these paths, we develop an original systematic combinatorial approach providing direct access to the exponential growth factors of…
Enumeration of tilings is the mathematical study concerning the total number of coverings of regions by similar pieces without gaps or overlaps. Enumeration of tilings has become a vibrant subfield of combinatorics with connections and applications to diverse mathematical areas. In 1999, James Propp published his well-known list of 32 open problems in the field. The list has got much attention from experts around the world. After two decades, most of the problems on the list have been solved and generalized. In this paper, we propose a set of new tiling problems. This survey paper contributes …
We obtain explicit formulas for the enumeration of labelled parallelogram polyominoes. These are the polyominoes that are bounded, above and below, by north-east lattice paths going from the origin to a point (k,n). The numbers from 1 and n (the labels) are bijectively attached to the $n$ north steps of the above-bounding path, with the condition that they appear in increasing values along consecutive north steps. We calculate the Frobenius characteristic of the action of the symmetric group S_n on these labels. All these enumeration results are refined to take into account the area of these p…
The field of analytic combinatorics, which studies the asymptotic behaviour of sequences through analytic properties of their generating functions, has led to the development of deep and powerful tools with applications across mathematics and the natural sciences. In addition to the now classical univariate theory, recent work in the study of analytic combinatorics in several variables (ACSV) has shown how to derive asymptotics for the coefficients of certain D-finite functions represented by diagonals of multivariate rational functions. We give a pedagogical introduction to the methods of ACS…
We introduce a one-person game that we call Padlock Solitaire which resembles the well-known clock solitaire card game. Analyzing variants of this game we obtain simple proofs of some classical results of combinatorics including ballot theorems and the enumeration of spanning trees in various graphs and hypergraphs.
We study the combinatorics of ad-nilpotent ideals of a Borel subalgebra of $sl(n+1,\Bbb C)$. We provide an inductive method for calculating the class of nilpotence of these ideals and formulas for the number of ideals having a given class of nilpotence. We study the relationships between these results and the combinatorics of Dyck paths, based upon a remarkable bijection between ad-nilpotent ideals and Dyck paths. Finally, we propose a (q,t)-analogue of the Catalan number $C_n$. These (q,t)-Catalan numbers count on the one hand ad-nilpotent ideals with respect to dimension and class of nilpote…
The aim of this paper is to develop the combinatorics of constructions associated to what we call \emph{triangular partitions}. As introduced in arXiv:2102.07931, these are the partitions whose cells are those lying below the line joining points $(r,0)$ and $(0,s)$, for any given positive reals $r$ and $s$. Classical notions such as Dyck paths and parking functions are naturally generalized by considering the set of partitions included in a given triangular partition. One of our striking results is that the restriction of the Young lattice to triangular partition has a planar Hasse diagram, wi…
We study Schroder paths drawn in a (m,n) rectangle, for any positive integers m and n. We get explicit enumeration formulas, closely linked to those for the corresponding (m,n)-Dyck paths. Moreover we study a Schroder version of (m,n)-parking functions, and associated (q,t)-analogs.
We continue to investigate the properties of the earlier defined functions fm and gm, which depend on an initial arithmetic function f0. In this papers values of f0 are the Fine numbers. We investigate functions fi; gi; (i = 1; 2; 3; 4). For each function, we derive an explicit formula and give a combinatorial interpretation. It appears that g2 and g3 are well-known combinatoric object called the Catalan triangles. We finish with an identity consisting of ten items.
We determine the exact and asymptotic number of unlabeled outerplanar graphs. The exact number g_n of unlabeled outerplanar graphs on n vertices can be computed in polynomial time, and g_n is asymptotically $g n^{-5/2}ρ^{-n}$, where $g\approx0.00909941$ and $ρ^{-1}\approx7.50360$ can be approximated. Using our enumerative results we investigate several statistical properties of random unlabeled outerplanar graphs on n vertices, for instance concerning connectedness, chromatic number, and the number of edges. To obtain the results we combine classical cycle index enumeration with recent results…
This paper considers three separate matrices associated to graphs and (each dimension of) cell complexes. It relates all the coefficients of their respective characteristic polynomials to the geometric and combinatorial enumeration of three kinds of subobjects. The matrices are: the mesh matrix for integral d-cycles of Trent, the mesh matrix for integral d-boundaries, and the Kirchhoff matrix, i.e., the combinatorial Laplacian, for integral (d-1)-chains. Relations to Reidemeister-Franz torsion are elucidated and relations to the foundational work of R. Lyons and G. Kalai.
Lecture notes for the proceedings of the workshop "Algebraic Combinatorics related to Young diagram and statistical physics", Aug. 6-10 2012, I.I.A.S., Nara, Japan.
We provide bivariate asymptotics for the poly-Bernoulli numbers, a combinatorial array that enumerates lonesum matrices, using the methods of Analytic Combinatorics in Several Variables (ACSV). For the diagonal asymptotic (i.e., for the special case of square lonesum matrices) we present an alternative proof based on Parseval's identity. In addition, we provide an application in Algebraic Statistics on the asymptotic ML-degree of the bivariate multinomial missing data problem, and we strengthen an existing result on asymptotic enumeration of permutations having a specified excedance set.
A well-known problem in Algebraic Combinatorics, is the enumeration of circulant graphs. The failure of Adam's Conjecture for such graphs with order containing a repeated prime, led researchers to investigate the problem using two different methods, namely the multiplier method and the structural method. The former makes use of isomorphism theorems whereas the latter involves Schur rings. Both these methods have already been used to count the number of non-isomorphic circulants of order $p^2$. This research focuses on the extension of these two methods to enumerate circulants of order $p^3$, i…
This article investigates combinatorial properties of non-ambiguous trees. These objects we define may be seen either as binary trees drawn on a grid with some constraints, or as a subset of the tree-like tableaux previously defined by Aval, Boussicault and Nadeau. The enumeration of non-ambiguous trees satisfying some additional constraints allows us to give elegant combinatorial proofs of identities due to Carlitz, and to Ehrenborg and Steingrímsson. We also provide a hook formula to count the number of non-ambiguous trees with a given underlying tree. Finally, we use non-ambiguous trees to …
Many enumeration problems in combinatorics, including such fundamental questions as the number of regular graphs, can be expressed as high-dimensional complex integrals. Motivated by the need for a systematic study of the asymptotic behaviour of such integrals, we establish explicit bounds on the exponentials of complex martingales. Those bounds applied to the case of truncated normal distributions are precise enough to include and extend many enumerative results of Barvinok, Canfield, Gao, Greenhill, Hartigan, Isaev, McKay, Wang, Wormald, and others. Our method applies to sums as well as inte…
We describe various aspects of the Al-Salam-Chihara $q$-Laguerre polynomials. These include combinatorial descriptions of the polynomials, the moments, the orthogonality relation and a combinatorial interpretation of the linearization coefficients. It is remarkable that the corresponding moment sequence appears also in the recent work of Postnikov and Williams on enumeration of totally positive Grassmann cells.
We correct a 1957 combinatorial enumeration by the linguist J. Greenberg. The desired count, the Bell number B(25), supported using his Mass Comparison method for language classification. In 1987, he used this method to classify indigenous languages of the Americas into three families. Actually, the same combinatorics provides a back-of-the-envelope estimate for the number of families. This suggests that alternative classifications with over a hundred families possess the right order of magnitude.
We present applications of rectangular matrix models to various combinatorial problems, among which the enumeration of face-bicolored graphs with prescribed vertex degrees, and vertex-tricolored triangulations. We also mention possible applications to Interaction-Round-a-Face and hard-particle statistical models defined on random lattices.
In this paper we study canonical $γ$-structures, a class of RNA pseudoknot structures that plays a key role in the context of polynomial time folding of RNA pseudoknot structures. A $γ$-structure is composed by specific building blocks, that have topological genus less than or equal to $γ$, where composition means concatenation and nesting of such blocks. Our main result is the derivation of the generating function of $γ$-structures via symbolic enumeration using so called irreducible shadows. We furthermore recursively compute the generating polynomials of irreducible shadows of genus $\le γ$…
This paper describes an enumeration of all words having a combinatoric property called "rhythmic oddity property"named \emph{rop-words}.\ This property was introduced by Simha Aron in the 1990s. The set of rop-words is not a subset of the set of Lyndon words, but is very closed. We show that there is a bijection between some necklaces and rop-words. This leads to a formula for counting the rop-words of a given length. \textsc{Keywords:} Combinatoric on words. Lyndon words. Rhythmic oddity. Music formalization
In enumerative combinatorics, it is often a goal to enumerate both labeled and unlabeled structures of a given type. The theory of combinatorial species is a novel toolset which provides a rigorous foundation for dealing with the distinction between labeled and unlabeled structures. The cycle index series of a species encodes the labeled and unlabeled enumerative data of that species. Moreover, by using species operations, we are able to solve for the cycle index series of one species in terms of other, known cycle indices of other species. Section 3 is an exposition of species theory and Sect…
We present a purely combinatorial solution of the problem of enumerating planar bicubic maps with hard particles. This is done by use of a bijection with a particular class of blossom trees with particles, obtained by an appropriate cutting of the maps. Although these trees have no simple local characterization, we prove that their enumeration may be performed upon introducing a larger class of "admissible" trees with possibly doubly-occupied edges and summing them with appropriate signed weights. The proof relies on an extension of the cutting procedure allowing for the presence on the maps o…
Drawing together techniques from combinatorics and computer science, we improve the census algorithm for enumerating closed minimal P^2-irreducible 3-manifold triangulations. In particular, new constraints are proven for face pairing graphs, and pruning techniques are improved using a modification of the union-find algorithm. Using these results we catalogue all 136 closed non-orientable P^2-irreducible 3-manifolds that can be formed from at most ten tetrahedra.
We consider the counting problem of the number of \textit{leaf-labeled increasing trees}, where internal nodes may have an arbitrary number of descendants. The set of all such trees is a discrete representation of the genealogies obtained under certain population-genetical models such as multiple-merger coalescents. While the combinatorics of the binary trees among those are well understood, for the number of all trees only an approximate asymptotic formula is known. In this work, we validate this formula up to constant terms and compare the asymptotic behavior of the number of all leaf-labell…
Symmetric functions provide one of the most efficient tools for combinatorial enumeration, in the context of objects that may be acted upon by permutations. Only assuming a basic knowledge of linear algebra, we introduce and describe the classical toolbox of symmetric functions, and give many examples of their uses. In particular, we present how classical formulas of enumerative combinatorics afford a natural generalization in terms of symmetric functions. We then rapidly present Macdonald symmetric functions and associated operators, to go on with the description of their relations to rectang…
We consider a partially asymmetric exclusion process (PASEP) on a finite number of sites with open and directed boundary conditions. Its partition function was calculated by Blythe, Evans, Colaiori, and Essler. It is known to be a generating function of permutation tableaux by the combinatorial interpretation of Corteel and Williams. We prove bijectively two new combinatorial interpretations. The first one is in terms of weighted Motzkin paths called Laguerre histories and is obtained by refining a bijection of Foata and Zeilberger. Secondly we show that this partition function is the generati…
Consider generalizations of the boundary singularities B_n of the functions on the real line to the case where the boundary consists of a finite number of l points. These singularities B_n^l could also arise in higher dimensional case, when the boundary is an immersed hypersurface. We obtain a particular recurrent equation on the numbers of connected components of very nice M-morsification spaces of the multiboundary singularities B_n^l. This helps us to express the numbers K_n^l (for l=2,3,4...) by Bernoulli-Euler numbers. We also find the corresponding generating functions.
A boolean function of $n$ boolean variables is {correlation-immune} of order $k$ if the function value is uncorrelated with the values of any $k$ of the arguments. Such functions are of considerable interest due to their cryptographic properties, and are also related to the orthogonal arrays of statistics and the balanced hypercube colourings of combinatorics. The {weight} of a boolean function is the number of argument values that produce a function value of 1. If this is exactly half the argument values, that is, $2^{n-1}$ values, a correlation-immune function is called {resilient}. An asymp…
We consider the enumeration of walks on the two dimensional non-negative integer lattice with short steps. Up to isomorphism there are 79 unique two dimensional models to consider, and previous work in this area has used the kernel method, along with a rigorous computer algebra approach, to show that 23 of the 79 models admit D-finite generating functions. In 2009, Bostan and Kauers used Padé-Hermite approximants to guess differential equations which these 23 generating functions satisfy, in the process guessing asymptotics of their coefficient sequences. In this article we provide, for the fi…
The 321,hexagon-avoiding (321-hex) permutations were introduced and studied by Billey and Warrington in as a class of elements of S_n whose Kazhdan-Lusztig and Poincare polynomials and the singular loci of whose Schubert varieties have certain fairly simple and explicit descriptions. This paper provides a 7-term linear recurrence relation leading to an explicit enumeration of the 321-hex permutations. A complete description of the corresponding generating tree is obtained as a by-product of enumeration techniques used in the paper, including Schensted's 321-subsequences decomposition, a 5-para…
At a crossroads of calculus and combinatorics, the generating function of secant and tangent numbers (Euler numbers) provides enumeration of alternating permutations. In this article, we present a new refinement of Euler numbers to answer the combinatorial question on some particular relation of Euler numbers proved by Heneghan-Petersen, Power series for up-down min-max permutations, College Math. Journal, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2014), 83-91.
Prudent walks are special self-avoiding walks that never take a step towards an already occupied site, and \emph{$k$-sided prudent walks} (with $k=1,2,3,4$) are, in essence, only allowed to grow along $k$ directions. Prudent polygons are prudent walks that return to a point adjacent to their starting point. Prudent walks and polygons have been previously enumerated by length and perimeter (Bousquet-Mélou, Schwerdtfeger; 2010). We consider the enumeration of \emph{prudent polygons} by \emph{area}. For the 3-sided variety, we find that the generating function is expressed in terms of a $q$-hyper…
In this article, we study directed graphs (digraphs) with a coloring constraint due to Von Neumann and related to Nim-type games. This is equivalent to the notion of kernels of digraphs, which appears in numerous fields of research such as game theory, complexity theory, artificial intelligence (default logic, argumentation in multi-agent systems), 0-1 laws in monadic second order logic, combinatorics (perfect graphs)... Kernels of digraphs lead to numerous difficult questions (in the sense of NP-completeness, #P-completeness). However, we show here that it is possible to use a generating func…
We provide precise asymptotic estimates for the number of general phylogenetic networks by using analytic combinatorial methods. Recently, this approach is studied by Fuchs, Gittenberger, and the author himself (Australasian Journal of Combinatorics 73(2):385-423, 2019), to count networks with few reticulation vertices for two subclasses: tree-child and normal networks. We follow this line of research to show how to obtain results on the enumeration of general phylogenetic networks.
A method to obtain all-order asymptotic results for the coefficients of perturbative expansions in zero-dimensional quantum field is described. The focus is on the enumeration of the number of skeleton or primitive diagrams of a certain QFT and its asymptotics. The procedure heavily applies techniques from singularity analysis and is related to resurgence. To utilize singularity analysis, a representation of the zero-dimensional path integral as a generalized hyperelliptic curve is deduced. As applications the full asymptotic expansions of the number of disconnected, connected, 1PI and skeleto…
Consider a family $\mathcal{T}$ of 3-connected graphs of moderate growth, and let $\mathcal{G}$ be the class of graphs whose 3-connected components are graphs in $\mathcal{T}$. We present a general framework for analyzing such graphs classes based on singularity analysis of generating functions, which generalizes previously studied cases such as planar graphs and series-parallel graphs. We provide a general result for the asymptotic number of graphs in $\mathcal{G}$, based on the singularities of the exponential generating function associated to $\mathcal{T}$. We derive limit laws, which are e…
In this paper we present the asymptotic enumeration of RNA structures with pseudoknots. We develop a general framework for the computation of exponential growth rate and the sub exponential factors for $k$-noncrossing RNA structures. Our results are based on the generating function for the number of $k$-noncrossing RNA pseudoknot structures, ${\sf S}_k(n)$, derived in \cite{Reidys:07pseu}, where $k-1$ denotes the maximal size of sets of mutually intersecting bonds. We prove a functional equation for the generating function $\sum_{n\ge 0}{\sf S}_k(n)z^n$ and obtain for $k=2$ and $k=3$ the analy…
This work presents new asymptotic formulas for family of walks in Weyl chambers. The models studied here are defined by step sets which exhibit many symmetries and are restricted to the first orthant. The resulting formulas are very straightforward: the exponential growth of each model is given by the number of steps, while the sub-exponential growth depends only on the dimension of the underlying lattice and the number of steps moving forward in each coordinate. These expressions are derived by analyzing the singular variety of a multivariate rational function whose diagonal counts the lattic…
We study the enumeration problem for different kind of tree parking functions introduced recently, called tree parking functions, tree parking distributions, prime tree parking functions, and prime tree parking distributions, for rooted labelled trees of important combinatorial tree families including labelled ordered, unordered and binary trees. Using combinatorial decompositions of the underlying structures yields, after solving the resulting equations, implicit characterizations of suitable generating functions of the total number of such tree parking functions for trees of size $n$ and $n$…
Using polynomial equations to model combinatorial problems has been a popular tool both in computational combinatorics as well as an approach to proving new theorems. In this paper, we look at several combinatorics problems modeled by systems of polynomial equations satisfying special properties. If the equations are infeasible, Hilbert's Nullstellensatz gives a certificate of this fact. These certificates have been studied and exhibit combinatorial meaning. In this paper, we generalize some known results and show that the Nullstellensatz certificate can be viewed as enumerating combinatorial …
We study the distribution of singular and unimodular matrices in sumsets in matrix rings over finite fields. We apply these results to estimate the largest prime divisor of the determinants in sumsets in matrix rings over the integers.
In this paper, we justify by the use of Enumerative Combinatorics, that the results obtained in \cite{Alarcon1}, where is analysed the complex dynamics of an epidemic model to identify the nodes that contribute the most to the propagation process and because of that are good candidates to be controlled in the network in order to stabilize the network to reach the extinction state, is applicable in almost all the cases. The model analysed was proposed in \cite{Gomez1} %et al. [Phys.Rev.E 84, 036105(2011)] and results obtained in \cite{Alarcon1} implies that it is not necessary to control all no…
Functional equations with one catalytic appear in several combinatorial applications, most notably in the enumeration of lattice paths and in the enumeration of planar maps. The main purpose of this paper is to show that under certain positivity assumptions the dominant singularity of the solutions have a universal behavior. We have to distinguish between linear catalytic equations, where a dominating square root singularity appears, and non-linear catalytic equations, where we - usually - have a singularity of type 3/2.
