We use the residue theorem to derive an expression for the number of lattice oints in a dilated n-dimensional tetrahedron with vertices at lattice points on each coordinate axis and the origin. This expression is known as the Ehrhart polynomial. We show that it is a polynomial in t, where t is the integral dilation parameter. We prove the Ehrhart-Macdonald reciprocity law for these tetrahedra, relating the Ehrhart polynomials of the interior and the closure of the tetrahedra. To illustrate our method, we compute the Ehrhart coefficient for codimension 2. Finally, we show how our ideas can be used to compute the Ehrhart polynomial for an arbitrary convex lattice polytope.
We say that a set $S$ is additively decomposed into two sets $A$ and $B$ if $S = \{a+b : a\in A, \ b \in B\}$. A. Sárközy has recently conjectured that the set $Q$ of quadratic residues modulo a prime $p$ does not have nontrivial decompositions. Although various partial results towards this conjecture have been obtained, it is still open. Here we obtain a nontrivial upper bound on the number of such decompositions.
We present a short, self-contained, and purely combinatorial proof of Linnik's theorem: for any $\varepsilon > 0$ there exists a constant $C_\varepsilon$ such that for any $N$, there are at most $C_\varepsilon$ primes $p \leqslant N$ such that the least positive quadratic non-residue modulo $p$ exceeds $N^\varepsilon$.
We develop a theory of the field of double Laurent series, iterated Laurent series, and Malcev-Neumann series that applies to most constant term evaluation problems. These include (i) MacMahon's partition analysis, counting solutions of systems of linear Diophantine equations or inequalities, counting the number of lattice points in convex polytopes, (ii) evaluating combinatorial sums and their generating functions, and proving combinatorial identities, and (iii) lattice path enumeration such as walks on the slit plane and walks on the quarter plane. In the general setting of this new theory, …
In this paper, we establish a residue theorem for Malcev-Neumann series that requires few constraints, and includes previously known combinatorial residue theorems as special cases. Our residue theorem identifies the residues of two formal series that are related by a change of variables. We obtain simple conditions for when a change of variables is possible, and find that the two related formal series in fact belong to two different fields of Malcev-Neumann series. The multivariate Lagrange inversion formula is easily derived and Dyson's conjecture is given a new proof and generalized.
Let $h=\prod_{i=1}^{t}p_i^{s_i}$ be its decomposition into a product of powers of distinct primes, and $\mathbb{Z}_{h}$ be the residue class ring modulo $h$. Let $\mathbb{Z}_{h}^{n}$ be the $n$-dimensional row vector space over $\mathbb{Z}_{h}$. A generalized Grassmann graph for $\mathbb{Z}_{h}^n$, denoted by $G_r(m,n,\mathbb{Z}_{h})$ ($G_r$ for short), has all $m$-subspaces of $\mathbb{Z}_{h}^n$ as its vertices, and two distinct vertices are adjacent if their intersection is of dimension $>m-r$, where $2\leq r\leq m+1\leq n$. In this paper, we determine the clique number and geometric structu…
We present a compact formula computing rational trigonometric sums. E. Verlinde's expression for the dimension of conformal blocks in WZW theory is an example of such a sum. As an application, we show that a formula of Bismut and Labourie for the Riemann-Roch numbers of moduli spaces of flat connections on a Riemann surface coincides with Verlinde's expression.
Let $h=\prod_{i=1}^{t}p_i^{s_i}$ be its decomposition into a product of powers of distinct primes, and $\mathbb{Z}_{h}$ be the residue class ring modulo $h$. Let $1\leq r\leq m\leq n$ and $\mathbb{Z}_{h}^{m\times n}$ be the set of all $m\times n$ matrices over $\mathbb{Z}_{h}$. The generalized bilinear forms graph over $\mathbb{Z}_{h}$, denoted by $\hbox{Bil}_r(\mathbb{Z}_{h}^{m\times n})$, has the vertex set $\mathbb{Z}_{h}^{m\times n}$, and two distinct vertices $A$ and $B$ are adjacent if the inner rank of $A-B$ is less than or equal to $r$. In this paper, we determine the clique number and…
We develop a meta-algorithm that, given a polynomial (in one or more variables), and a prime p, produces a fast (logarithmic time) algorithm that takes a positive integer n and outputs the number of times each residue class modulo p appears as a coefficient when the polynomial is raised to the power n and the coefficients are read modulo p.
In the first section of this paper we prove a theorem for the number of columns of a rectangular area that are identical to the given one. In the next section we apply this theorem to derive several combinatorial identities by counting specified subsets of a finite set.
Given a finite set of vectors spanning a lattice and lying in a halfspace of a real vector space, to each vector $a$ in this vector space one can associate a polytope consisting of nonnegative linear combinations of the vectors in the set which sum up to $a$. This polytope is called the partition polytope of $a$. If $a$ is integral, this polytope contains a finite set of lattice points corresponding to nonnegative integral linear combinations. The partition polytope associated to an integral $a$ is a rational convex polytope, and any rational convex polytope can be realized canonically as a pa…
The Baldoni--Vergne volume and Ehrhart polynomial formulas for flow polytopes are significant in at least two ways. On one hand, these formulas are in terms of Kostant partition functions, connecting flow polytopes to this classical vector partition function fundamental in representation theory. On the other hand the Ehrhart polynomials can be read off from the volume functions of flow polytopes. The latter is remarkable since the leading term of the Ehrhart polynomial of an integer polytope is its volume! Baldoni and Vergne proved these formulas via residues. To reveal the geometry of these f…
The counting and (upper) mass dimensions are notions of dimension for subsets of $\mathbb{Z}^d$. We develop their basic properties and give a characterization of the counting dimension via coverings. In addition, we prove Marstrand-type results for both dimensions. For example, if $A \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ has counting dimension $D(A)$, then for almost every orthogonal projection with range of dimension $k$, the counting dimension of the image of $A$ is at least $\min \big(k,D(A)\big)$. As an application, for subsets $A_1, \ldots, A_d$ of $\mathbb{R}$, we are able to give bounds on the counti…
We obtain the symplectic group $\SP(V)$ as the universal completion of an amalgam of low rank subgroups akin to Levi components. We let $\SP(V)$ act flag-transitively on the geometry of maximal rank subspaces of $V$. We show that this geometry and its rank $\ge 3$ residues are simply connected with few exceptions. The main exceptional residue is described in some detail. The amalgamation result is then obtained by applying Tits' lemma. This provides a new way of recognizing the symplectic groups from a small collection of small subgroups.
It is well known that for a regular semistable curve $\mathfrak X$ over a DVR with algebraically closed residue field, the spanning trees of the dual graph of the special fiber of $\mathfrak X$ are in bijection with components of the special fiber of the Néron model of the Jacobian of $\mathfrak X$. We prove a generalization of this fact that does not require the residue field to be algebraically closed, using a combinatorially enriched version of the dual graph to encode arithmetic information about divisors on $\mathfrak X$.
Let ${\mathcal C}$ be the category of finite graphs. Lovàsz (1967) shows that if $|\mathrm{Hom}(X,A)|=|\mathrm{Hom}(X,B)|$ holds for any $X$, then $A$ is isomorphic to $B$. Pultr (1973) gives a categorical generalization using a similar argument. Both proofs assume that each object has a finite number of isomorphism classes of subobjects. Generalizations without this assumption are given by Dawar, Jakl, and Reggio (2021) and Regio (2021). Here another generalization without this assumption is given, with a shorter proof. Examples of categories are given, for which our theorem is applicable, bu…
A recent paper of Church, Ellenberg, and Farb uses topology and representation theory of the symmetric group to prove enumerative results about square-free polynomials and F-stable maximal tori of the general linear group over the algebraic closure of F_q. In this note, we use generating functions to give elementary proofs of some of their results, and some extensions.
By revisiting the Kirchhoff's Matrix-Tree Theorem, we give an exact formula for the number of spanning trees of a graph in terms of the quantum relative entropy between the maximally mixed state and another state specifically obtained from the graph. We use properties of the quantum relative entropy to prove tight bounds for the number of spanning trees in terms of basic parameters like degrees and number of vertices.
