Lin and Chang gave a generating function of convex polyominoes with an $m+1$ by $n+1$ minimal bounding rectangle. Gessel showed that their result implies that the number of such polyominoes is $$ \frac{m+n+mn}{m+n}{2m+2n\choose 2m}-\frac{2mn}{m+n}{m+n\choose m}^2. $$ We show that this result can be derived from some binomial coefficients identities related to the generating function of Jacobi polynomials.
We present a new method to obtain the generating functions for directed convex polyominoes according to several different statistics including: width, height, size of last column/row and number of corners. This method can be used to study different families of directed convex polyominoes: symmetric polyominoes, parallelogram polyominoes. In this paper, we apply our method to determine the generating function for directed k-convex polyominoes. We show it is a rational function and we study its asymptotic behavior.
In this paper we consider a restricted class of convex polyominoes that we call Z-convex polyominoes. Z-convex polyominoes are polyominoes such that any two pairs of cells can be connected by a monotone path making at most two turns (like the letter Z). In particular they are convex polyominoes, but they appear to resist standard decompositions. We propose a construction by ``inflation'' that allows to write a system of functional equations for their generating functions. The generating function P(t) of Z-convex polyominoes with respect to the semi-perimeter turns out to be algebraic all the s…
In this paper, we introduce and study {\it Carlitz polyominoes}. In particular, we show that, as $n$ grows to infinity, asymptotically the number of \begin{enumerate} \item column-convex Carlitz polyominoes with perimeter $2n$ is \beq \frac{9\sqrt{2}(14+3\sqrt{3})}{2704\sqrt{πn^3}}4^n. \feq \item convex Carlitz polyominoes with perimeter $2n$ is \beq \frac{n+1}{10}\left(\frac{3+\sqrt{5}}{2}\right)^{n-2}. \feq \end{enumerate}
Column-convex polyominoes were introduced in 1950's by Temperley, a mathematical physicist working on "lattice gases". By now, column-convex polyominoes are a popular and well-understood model. There exist several generalizations of column-convex polyominoes; an example is a model called multi-directed animals. In this paper, we introduce a new sequence of supersets of column-convex polyominoes. Our model (we call it level m column-subconvex polyominoes) is defined in a simple way. We focus on the case when cells are hexagons and we compute the area generating functions for the levels one and …
Column-convex polyominoes are by now a well-explored model. So far, however, no attention has been given to polyominoes whose columns can have either one or two connected components. This little known kind of polyominoes seems not to be manageable as a whole. To obtain solvable models, one needs to introduce some restrictions. This paper is focused on polyominoes with hexagonal cells. The restrictions just mentioned are semidirectedness and an upper bound on the size of the gap within a column. The solvable models so obtained have rational area generating functions, as column-convex polyominoe…
We give a new combinatorial proof for the number of convex polyominoes whose minimum enclosing rectangle has given dimensions. We also count the subclass of these polyominoes that contain the lower left corner of the enclosing rectangle (directed polyominoes). We indicate how to sample random polyominoes in these classes. As a side result, we calculate the first and second moments of the number of common points of two monotone lattice paths between two given points.
In this article we prove a conjecture of Bezdek, Brass, and Harborth concerning the maximum volume of the convex hull of any facet-to-facet connected system of n unit hypercubes in the d-dimensional Euclidean space. For d=2 we enumerate the extremal polyominoes and determine the set of possible areas of the convex hull for each n.
This paper concerns the enumeration of rotation-type and congruence-type convex polyominoes on the square lattice. These can be defined as orbits of the groups C4, of rotations, and D4, of symmetries of the square acting on (translation- type) polyominoes. In virtue of Burnside's Lemma, it is sufficient to enumerate the various symmetry classes (fixed points) of polyominoes defined by the elements of C4 and D4. Using the Temperley--Bousquet-Melou methodology, we solve this problem and provide explicit or recursive formulas for their generating functions according to width, height and area. We …
Parallelogram polyominoes are a subclass of convex polyominoes in the square lattice that has been studied extensively in the literature. Recently congruence classes of convex polyominoes with respect to rotations and reflections have been enumerated by counting orbits under the action of the dihedral group D4, of symmetries of the square, on (translation-type) convex polyominoes. Asymmetric convex polyominoes were also enumerated using Moebius inversion in the lattice of subgroups of D4. Here we extend these results to the subclass of parallelogram polyominos using a subgroup D2 of D4 which a…
Motivated by some binomial coefficients identities encountered in our approach to the enumeration of convex polyominoes, we prove some more general identities of the same type, one of which turns out to be related to a strange evaluation of ${}_3F_2$ of Gessel and Stanton.
In most of today's exactly solved classes of polyominoes, either all members are convex (in some way), or all members are directed, or both. If the class is neither convex nor directed, the exact solution uses to be elusive. This paper is focused on polyominoes with hexagonal cells. Concretely, we deal with polyominoes whose columns can have either one or two connected components. Those polyominoes (unlike the well-explored column-convex polyominoes) cannot be exactly enumerated by any of the now existing methods. It is therefore appropriate to introduce additional restrictions, thus obtaining…
The main contribution of this paper is a new column-by-column method for the decomposition of generating functions of convex polyominoes suitable for enumeration with respect to various statistics including but not limited to interior vertices, boundary vertices of certain degrees, and outer site perimeter. Using this decomposition, among other things, we show that A) the average number of interior vertices over all convex polyominoes of perimeter $2n$ is asymptotic to $\frac{n^2}{12}+\frac{n\sqrt{n}}{3\sqrtπ} -\frac{(21π-16)n}{12π}.$ B) the average number of boundary vertices with degree two …
Column-convex polygons were first counted by area several decades ago, and the result was found to be a simple, rational, generating function. In this chapter we generalize that result. Let a p-column polyomino be a polyomino whose columns can have 1, 2,..., p connected components. Then column-convex polygons are equivalent to 1-convex polyominoes. The area generating function of even the simplest generalization, namely to 2-column polyominoes, is unlikely to be solvable. We therefore define a class of polyominoes which interpolates between column-convex polygons and 2-column polyominoes. We d…
In this thesis, we consider the problem of characterizing and enumerating sets of polyominoes described in terms of some constraints, defined either by convexity or by pattern containment. We are interested in a well known subclass of convex polyominoes, the k-convex polyominoes for which the enumeration according to the semi-perimeter is known only for k=1,2. We obtain, from a recursive decomposition, the generating function of the class of k-convex parallelogram polyominoes, which turns out to be rational. Noting that this generating function can be expressed in terms of the Fibonacci polyno…
A polyomino is a finite, edge-connected set of cells in the plane. At the present time, an enumeration of all polyominoes is nowhere in sight. On the other hand, there are several subsets of polyominoes for which generating functions are known. For example, there exists extensive knowledge about column-convex polyominoes, a model introduced by Temperley in 1956. While studying column-convex polyominoes, researchers also gave a look at diagonally convex polyominoes (DCPs), but noticed an awkward feature: when the last diagonal of a DCP is deleted, the remaining object is not always a polyomino.…
We study the coordinate ring of an $L$-convex polyomino, determine its regularity in terms of the maximal number of rooks that can be placed in the polyomino. We also characterize the Gorenstein $L$-convex polyominoes and those which are Gorenstein on the punctured spectrum, and compute the Cohen--Macaulay type of any $L$-convex polyomino in terms of the maximal rectangles covering it.
Hexagonal polyominoes are polyominoes on the honeycomb lattice. We enumerate the symmetry classes of convex hexagonal polyominoes. Here convexity is to be understood as convexity along the three main column directions. We deduce the generating series of free (i.e. up to reflection and rotation) and of asymmetric convex hexagonal polyominoes, according to area and half-perimeter. We give explicit formulas or implicit functional equations for the generating series, which are convenient for computer algebra.
We classify all convex polyomino ideals which are linearly related or have a linear resolution. Convex stack polyominoes whose ideals are extremal Gorenstein are also classified. In addition, we characterize, in combinatorial terms, the distributive lattices whose join-meet ideals are extremal Gorenstein or have a linear resolution.
Back in the early days of polyomino enumeration, a model called column-convex polyominoes was introduced and its area generating function was found. That generating function is rational: the numerator has degree four and the denominator has degree three. Let a column-duplex polyomino be a polyomino whose columns can have either one or two connected components. A simplex-duplex polyomino is a column-duplex polyomino in which there is no occurrence of two adjacent columns each having two connected components. Simplex-duplex polyominoes are not easy to deal with, but their area generating functio…
Let $X$ be a convex polyomino such that its vertex set is a sublattice of $\mathbb{N}^2$. Let $\Bbbk[X]$ be the toric ring (over a field $\Bbbk$) associated to $X$ in the sense of Qureshi, \emph{J. Algebra}, 2012. Write the Hilbert series of $\Bbbk[X]$ as $(1 + h_1 t + h_2 t^2 + \cdots )/(1-t)^{\dim(\Bbbk[X])}$. For $k \in \mathbb{N}$, let $r_k$ be the number of configurations in $X$ with $k$ pairwise non-attacking rooks. We show that $h_2 < r_2$ if $X$ is not a thin polyomino. This partially confirms a conjectured characterization of thin polyominoes by Rinaldo and Romeo, \emph{J. Algebraic C…
In this paper we determine a closed formula for the number of convex permutominoes of size n. We reach this goal by providing a recursive generation of all convex permutominoes of size n+1 from the objects of size n, according to the ECO method, and then translating this construction into a system of functional equations satisfied by the generating function of convex permutominoes. As a consequence we easily obtain also the enumeration of some classes of convex polyominoes, including stack and directed convex permutominoes.
