Permutation polytopes and indecomposable elements in permutation groups
Robert Guralnick, David Perkinson
备注：
18 pages. To appear in the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. A corollary about solvable primitive permutation groups has been added. We have fixed some typos and made revisions according to referees' comments
Each group G of nxn permutation matrices has a corresponding permutation polytope, P(G):=conv(G) in R^{nxn}. We relate the structure of P(G) to the transitivity of G. In particular, we show that if G has t nontrivial orbits, then min{2t,floor(n/2)} is a sharp upper bound on the diameter of the graph of P(G); so if G is transitive, the diameter is at most 2. We also show that P(G) achieves its maximal dimension of (n-1)^2 precisely when G is 2-transitive. We then extend results of I. Pak on mixing times for a random walk on P(G). Our work depends on a new result for permutation groups involving writing permutations as products of indecomposable permutations.
We analyze marked poset polytopes and generalize a result due to Hibi and Li, answering whether the marked chain polytope is unimodular equivalent to the marked order polytope. Both polytopes appear naturally in the representation theory of semi-simple Lie algebras, and hence we can give a necessary and sufficient condition on the marked poset such that the associated toric degenerations of the corresponding partial flag variety are isomorphic. We further show that the set of lattice points in such a marked poset polytope is the Minkowski sum of sets of lattice points for 0-1 polytopes. Moreov…
Comtet introduced the notion of indecomposable permutations in 1972. A permutation is indecomposable if and only if it has no proper prefix which is itself a permutation. Indecomposable permutations were studied in the literature in various contexts. In particular, this notion has been proven to be useful in obtaining non-trivial enumeration and equidistribution results on permutations. In this paper, we give a complete classification of indecomposable permutations avoiding a classical pattern of length 3 or 4, and of indecomposable permutations avoiding a non-consecutive vincular pattern of l…
We show that the Möbius function of an interval in a permutation poset where the lower bound is sum (resp. skew) indecomposable depends solely on the sum (resp. skew) indecomposable permutations contained in the upper bound, and that this can simplify the calculation of the Möbius sum. For increasing oscillations, we give a recursion for the Möbius sum which only involves evaluating simple inequalities.
We investigate the combinatorics and geometry of permutation polytopes associated to cyclic permutation groups, i.e., the convex hulls of cyclic groups of permutation matrices. We give formulas for their dimension and vertex degree. In the situation that the generator of the group consists of at most two orbits, we can give a complete combinatorial description of the associated permutation polytope. In the case of three orbits the facet structure is already quite complex. For a large class of examples we show that there exist exponentially many facets.
Hypermaps were introduced as an algebraic tool for the representation of embeddings of graphs on an orientable surface. Recently a bijection was given between hypermaps and indecomposable permutations; this sheds new light on the subject by connecting a hypermap to a simpler object. In this paper, a bijection between indecomposable permutations and labelled Dyck paths is proposed, from which a few enumerative results concerning hypermaps and maps follow. We obtain for instance an inductive formula for the number of hypermaps with n darts, p vertices and q hyper-edges; the latter is also the nu…
We prove that the number of right ideals of codimension $n$ in the algebra of noncommutative Laurent polynomials in two variables over the finite field $\mathbb F\_q$ is equal to $(q-1)^{n+1} q^{\frac{(n+1)(n-2)}{2}}\sum\_θq^{inv(θ)}$, where the sum is over all indecomposable permutations in $S\_{n+1}$ and where $inv(θ)$stands for the number of inversions of $θ$.
A permutation polytope is the convex hull of a group of permutation matrices. In this paper we investigate the combinatorics of permutation polytopes and their faces. As applications we completely classify permutation polytopes in dimensions 2,3,4, and the corresponding permutation groups up to a suitable notion of equivalence. We also provide a list of combinatorial types of possibly occuring faces of permutation polytopes up to dimension four.
We apply combinatorial methods to a geometric problem: the classification of polytopes, in terms of Minkowski decomposability. Various properties of skeletons of polytopes are exhibited, each sufficient to guarantee indecomposability of a significant class of polytopes. We illustrate further the power of these techniques, compared with the traditional method of examining triangular faces, with several applications. In any dimension $d\neq 2$, we show that of all the polytopes with $d^2+\frac{d}{2}$ or fewer edges, only one is decomposable. In 3 dimensions, we complete the classification, in te…
We clarify the notion of effective equivalence and characterize geometrically the effectively equivalent permutation groups. In particular, we present examples showing that the latter do not correspond to affinely equivalent polytopes thereby answering Question 2.12 of [BHNP09]. We apply our characterization to our examples and formulate several questions.
In [Baumeister, H., Nill, Paffenholz, On permutation polytopes, Adv. Math. 222 (2009), 431-452 / arXiv:0709.1615] we conjectured a characterization of subgroups H of a permutation group G so that, on the level of permutation polytopes, P(H) is a face of P(G). Here we present the embarrassingly simple proof of this conjecture.
This paper focuses on determining the volumes of permutation polytopes associated to cyclic groups, dihedral groups, groups of automorphisms of tree graphs, and Frobenius groups. We do this through the use of triangulations and the calculation of Ehrhart polynomials. We also present results on the theta body hierarchy of various permutation polytopes.
We introduce Lipschitz functions on a finite partially ordered set $P$ and study the associated Lipschitz polytope $L(P)$. The geometry of $L(P)$ can be described in terms of descent-compatible permutations and permutation statistics that generalize descents and big ascents. For ranked posets, Lipschitz polytopes are centrally-symmetric and Gorenstein, which implies symmetry and unimodality of the statistics. Finally, we define $(P,k)$-hypersimplices as generalizations of classical hypersimplices and give combinatorial interpretations of their volumes and $h^*$-vectors.
Symmetry plays a fundamental role in design of experiments. In particular, symmetries of factorial designs that preserve their statistical properties are exploited to find designs with the best statistical properties. By using a result proved by Rosenberg [6], the concept of the LP relaxation orthogonal array polytope is developed and studied. A complete characterization of the permutation symmetry group of this polytope is made. Also, this characterization is verified computationally for many cases. Finally, a proof is provided.
We define and study a new family of polytopes which are formed as convex hulls of partial alternating sign matrices. We determine the inequality descriptions, number of facets, and face lattices of these polytopes. We also study partial permutohedra that we show arise naturally as projections of these polytopes. We enumerate facets and also characterize the face lattices of partial permutohedra in terms of chains in the Boolean lattice. Finally, we have a result and a conjecture on the volume of partial permutohedra when one parameter is fixed to be two.
We study proportions of consecutive occurrences of permutations of a given size. Specifically, the limit of such proportions on large permutations forms a region, called \emph{feasible region}. We show that this feasible region is a polytope, more precisely the cycle polytope of a specific graph called \emph{overlap graph}. This allows us to compute the dimension, vertices and faces of the polytope, and to determine the equations that define it. Finally we prove that the limit of classical occurrences and consecutive occurrences are in some sense independent. As a consequence, the scaling limi…
We study proportions of consecutive occurrences of permutations of a given size. Specifically, the feasible limits of such proportions on large permutations form a region, called feasible region. We show that this feasible region is a polytope, more precisely the cycle polytope of a specific graph called overlap graph. This allows us to compute the dimension, vertices and faces of the polytope. Finally, we prove that the limits of classical occurrences and consecutive occurrences are independent, in some sense made precise in the extended abstract. As a consequence, the scaling limit of a sequ…
The Birkhoff polytope $B_n$ is the convex hull of all $n\times n$ permutation matrices in $\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$. We compute the combinatorial symmetry group of the Birkhoff polytope. A representation polytope is the convex hull of some finite matrix group $G\leq \operatorname{GL}(d,\mathbb{R})$. We show that the group of permutation matrices is essentially the only finite matrix group which yields a representation polytope with the same face lattice as the Birkhoff polytope.
We show that permutations of size $n$ avoiding both of the dashed patterns 32-41 and 41-32 are equinumerous with indecomposable set partitions of size $n+1$, and deduce a related result.
A positroid is a special case of a realizable matroid that arose from the study of the totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian by Postnikov. In this paper, we study the facets of its matroid polytope and the independent set polytope. This allows one to describe the bases and independent sets directly from the decorated permutation, bypassing the use of the Grassmann necklace. We also describe a criterion for determining whether a given cyclic interval is a flat or not using the decorated permutation, then show how it applies to checking the concordancy of positroids.
An assosiahedron $\mathcal{K}^n$, known also as Stasheff polytope, is a multifaceted combinatorial object, which, in particular, can be realized as a convex hull of certain points in $\mathbf{R}^{n}$, forming $(n-1)$-dimensional polytope. A permutahedron $\mathcal{P}^n$ is a polytope of dimension $(n-1)$ in $\mathbf{R}^{n}$ with vertices forming various permutations of $n$-element set. There exist well-known orderings of vertices of $\mathcal{P}^n$ and $\mathcal{K}^n$ that make these objects into lattices: the first known as permutation lattices, and the latter as Tamari lattices. We establish…
We consider two shellings of the boundary of the hypercube equivalent if one can be transformed into the other by an isometry of the cube. We observe that a class of indecomposable permutations, bijectively equivalent to standard double occurrence words, may be used to encode one representative from each equivalence class of the shellings of the boundary of the hypercube. These permutations thus encode the shelling types of the boundary of the hypercube. We construct an adjacent transposition Gray code for this class of permutations. Our result is a signed variant of King's result showing that…
A real representation of a finite group naturally determines a polytope, generalizing the well-known Birkhoff polytope. This paper determines the structure of the polytope corresponding to the natural permutation representation of a general Frobenius group.
In this note we investigate the convex hull of those $n \times n$-permutation matrices that correspond to symmetries of a regular $n$-gon. We give the complete facet description. As an application, we show that this yields a Gorenstein polytope, and we determine the Ehrhart $h^*$-vector.
Up to isomorphism and duality, there are exactly two non-degenerate abstract regular polytopes of rank greater than $n-3$, one of rank $n-1$ and one of rank $n-2$, with automorphism groups that are transitive permutation groups of degree $n\geq 7$. In this paper we extend this classification of high rank regular polytopes to include the ranks $n-3$ and $n-4$. The result is, up to a isomorphism and duality, seven abstract regular polytopes of rank $n-3$ for each $n\geq 9$, and nine abstract regular polytopes of rank $n-4$ for each $n \geq 11$. Moreover we show that if a transitive permutation g…
We consider two polytopes. The quadratic assignment polytope $QAP(n)$ is the convex hull of the set of tensors $x\otimes x$, $x \in P_n$, where $P_n$ is the set of $n\times n$ permutation matrices. The second polytope is defined as follows. For every permutation of vertices of the complete graph $K_n$ we consider appropriate $\binom{n}{2} \times \binom{n}{2}$ permutation matrix of the edges of $K_n$. The Young polytope $P((n-2,2))$ is the convex hull of all such matrices. In 2009, S. Onn showed that the subgraph isomorphism problem can be reduced to optimization both over $QAP(n)$ and over $P(…
The Birkhoff polytope, defined to be the convex hull of $n\times n$ permutation matrices, is a well studied polytope in the context of the Ehrhart theory. This polytope is known to have many desirable properties, such as the Gorenstein property and existence of regular, unimodular triangulations. In this paper, we study analogues of the Birkhoff polytope for finite irreducible Coxeter groups of other types. We focus on a type-$B$ Birkhoff polytope $\mathcal{BB}(n)$ arising from signed permutation matrices and prove that it and its dual polytope are reflexive, and hence Gorenstein, and also pos…
Motivated by the study of polytopes formed as the convex hull of permutation matrices and alternating sign matrices, we define several new families of polytopes as convex hulls of sign matrices, which are certain {0,1,-1}-matrices in bijection with semistandard Young tableaux. We investigate various properties of these polytopes, including their inequality descriptions, vertices, facets, and face lattices, as well as connections to alternating sign matrix polytopes and transportation polytopes.
Given a permutation group acting on coordinates of $\mathbb{R}^n$, we consider lattice-free polytopes that are the convex hull of an orbit of one integral vector. The vertices of such polytopes are called \emph{core points} and they play a key role in a recent approach to exploit symmetry in integer convex optimization problems. Here, naturally the question arises, for which groups the number of core points is finite up to translations by vectors fixed by the group. In this paper we consider transitive permutation groups and prove this type of finiteness for the $2$-homogeneous ones. We provid…
Linear constraints for a matrix polytope with no fractional vertex are investigated as intersecting research among permutation codes, rank modulations, and linear programming methods. By focusing the discussion to the block structure of matrices, new classes of such polytopes are obtained from known small polytopes. This concept, called "consolidation", is applied to find a new compact graph which is known as an approach for the graph isomorphism problem. Encoding and decoding algorithms for our new permutation codes are obtained from existing algorithms for small polytopes. The minimum distan…
This paper deals with lattice congruences of the weak order on the symmetric group, and initiates the investigation of the cover graphs of the corresponding lattice quotients. These graphs also arise as the skeleta of the so-called quotientopes, a family of polytopes recently introduced by Pilaud and Santos [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc., 51:406-420, 2019], which generalize permutahedra, associahedra, hypercubes and several other polytopes. We prove that all of these graphs have a Hamilton path, which can be computed by a simple greedy algorithm. This is an application of our framework for exhaustive…
A permutation of [n] induces a graph on [n] such that the edges of the graph correspond to inversion pairs of the permutation. This graph is connected if and only if the corresponding permutation is indecomposable. Let s(n,m) denote a permutation chosen uniformly at random among all permutations of [n] with exactly m inversions. Let p(n,m) be the common value for the probabilities that s(n,m) is indecomposable or the corresponding graph is connected. We prove that p(n,m) is non-decreasing with m by constructing a Markov process in which s(n,m+1) is obtained from s(n,m) by increasing one of the…
Two well-known polytopes whose vertices are indexed by permutations in the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$ are the permutohedron $P_n$ and the Birkhoff polytope $B_n$. We consider polytopes $P_n(Π)$ and $B_n(Π)$, whose vertices correspond to the permutations in $\mathfrak{S}_n$ avoiding a set of patterns $Π$. For various choices of $Π$, we explore the Ehrhart polynomials and $h^*$-vectors of these polytopes as well as other aspects of their combinatorial structure. For $P_n(Π)$, we consider all subsets $Π\subseteq \mathfrak{S}_3$ and are able to provide results in most cases. To illustrate, $…
Let u and v be permutations on n letters, with u <= v in Bruhat order. A Bruhat interval polytope Q_{u,v} is the convex hull of all permutation vectors z = (z(1), z(2),...,z(n)) with u <= z <= v. Note that when u=e and v=w_0 are the shortest and longest elements of the symmetric group, Q_{e,w_0} is the classical permutohedron. Bruhat interval polytopes were studied recently by Kodama and the second author, in the context of the Toda lattice and the moment map on the flag variety. In this paper we study combinatorial aspects of Bruhat interval polytopes. For example, we give an inequality descr…
An orbit polytope is the convex hull of an orbit under a finite group $G \leq \operatorname{GL}(d,\mathbb{R})$. We develop a general theory of possible affine symmetry groups of orbit polytopes. For every group, we define an open and dense set of generic points such that the orbit polytopes of generic points have conjugated affine symmetry groups. We prove that the symmetry group of a generic orbit polytope is again $G$ if $G$ is itself the affine symmetry group of some orbit polytope, or if $G$ is absolutely irreducible. On the other hand, we describe some general cases where the affine symme…
We define the alternating sign matrix polytope as the convex hull of nxn alternating sign matrices and prove its equivalent description in terms of inequalities. This is analogous to the well known result of Birkhoff and von Neumann that the convex hull of the permutation matrices equals the set of all nonnegative doubly stochastic matrices. We count the facets and vertices of the alternating sign matrix polytope and describe its projection to the permutohedron as well as give a complete characterization of its face lattice in terms of modified square ice configurations. Furthermore we prove t…
We investigate convex polytopes of doubly stochastic matrices having special structures: symmetric, Hankel symmetric, centrosymmetric, and both symmetric and Hankel symmetric. We determine dimensions of these polytopes and classify their extreme points. We also determine a basis of the real vector spaces generated by permutation matrices with these special structures.
A polynomial has saturated Newton polytope (SNP) if every lattice point of the convex hull of its exponent vectors corresponds to a monomial. We compile instances of SNP in algebraic combinatorics (some with proofs, others conjecturally): skew Schur polynomials; symmetric polynomials associated to reduced words, Redfield--Polya theory, Witt vectors, and totally nonnegative matrices; resultants; discriminants (up to quartics); Macdonald polynomials; key polynomials; Demazure atoms; Schubert polynomials; and Grothendieck polynomials, among others. Our principal construction is the Schubitope. Fo…
The Birkhoff polytope B(n) is the convex hull of all (n x n) permutation matrices, i.e., matrices where precisely one entry in each row and column is one, and zeros at all other places. This is a widely studied polytope with various applications throughout mathematics. In this paper we study combinatorial types L of faces of a Birkhoff polytope. The Birkhoff dimension bd(L) of L is the smallest n such that B(n) has a face with combinatorial type L. By a result of Billera and Sarangarajan, a combinatorial type L of a d-dimensional face appears in some B(k) for k less or equal to 2d, so bd(L) is…
A $d$-dimensional matrix is called \emph{$1$-polystochastic} if it is non-negative and the sum over each line equals~$1$. Such a matrix that has a single $1$ in each line and zeros elsewhere is called a \emph{$1$-permutation} matrix. A \emph{diagonal} of a $d$-dimensional matrix of order $n$ is a choice of $n$ elements, no two in the same hyperplane. The \emph{permanent} of a $d$-dimensional matrix is the sum over the diagonals of the product of the elements within the diagonal. For a given order $n$ and dimension $d$, the set of $1$-polystochastic matrices forms a convex polytope that include…
Rauzy classes define a partition of the set of irreducible (or indecomposable) permutations. They were defined by G. Rauzy as part of an induction algorithm for interval exchange transformations. In this article we prove an explicit formula for the cardinality of all Rauzy classes.
A set of linearly constrained permutation matrices are proposed for constructing a class of permutation codes. Making use of linear constraints imposed on the permutation matrices, we can formulate a minimum Euclidian distance decoding problem for the proposed class of permutation codes as a linear programming (LP) problem. The main feature of this class of permutation codes, called LP decodable permutation codes, is this LP decodability. It is demonstrated that the LP decoding performance of the proposed class of permutation codes is characterized by the vertices of the code polytope of the c…
The 1-product of matrices $S_1 \in \mathbb{R}^{m_1 \times n_1}$ and $S_2 \in \mathbb{R}^{m_2 \times n_2}$ is the matrix in $\mathbb{R}^{(m_1+m_2) \times (n_1n_2)}$ whose columns are the concatenation of each column of $S_1$ with each column of $S_2$. Our main result is a polynomial time algorithm for the following problem: given a matrix $S$, is $S$ a 1-product, up to permutation of rows and columns? Our main motivation is a close link between the 1-product of matrices and the Cartesian product of polytopes, which goes through the concept of slack matrix. Determining whether a given matrix is …
Robust Hadamard matrices, unistochastic rays in Birkhoff polytope and equi-entangled bases in composite spaces
Wydział Fizyki, Uniwersytet Warszawski（华沙大学物理系）；Centrum Fizyki Teoretycznej PAN（波兰科学院理论物理中心）；Instytut Fizyki im. Smoluchowskiego, Uniwersytet Jagielloński（雅盖隆大学斯莫卢霍夫斯基物理研究所）
