14 pages, two figures, will appear in Discrete Mathematics' special issue on de Bruijn Cycles, Gray Codes and their generalizations; paper revised according to journal referees' suggestions
A Universal Cycle for t-multisets of [n]={1,...,n} is a cyclic sequence of $\binom{n+t-1}{t}$ integers from [n] with the property that each t-multiset of [n] appears exactly once consecutively in the sequence. For such a sequence to exist it is necessary that n divides $\binom{n+t-1}{t}$, and it is reasonable to conjecture that this condition is sufficient for large enough n in terms of t. We prove the conjecture completely for t in {2,3} and partially for t in {4,6}. These results also support a positive answer to a question of Knuth.
Consider the collection of all t-multisets of {1,...,n}. A universal cycle on multisets is a string of numbers, each of which is between 1 and n, such that if these numbers are considered in t-sized windows, every multiset in the collection is present in the string precisely once. The problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions on n and t for the existence of universal cycles and similar combinatorial structures was first addressed by DeBruijn in 1946 (who considered t-tuples instead of t-multisets). The past 15 years has seen a resurgence of interest in this area, primarily due to …
For a finite subset $A$ of $\mathbb{Z}_{>0}$, Lazar and Wachs (2019) conjectured that the number of cycles on $A$ with only even-odd drops is equal to the number of D-cycles on $A$. In this note, we introduce cycles on a multiset with only even-odd drops and prove bijectively a multiset version of their conjecture. As a consequence, the number of cycles on $[2n]$ with only even-odd drops equals the Genocchi number $g_n$. With Laguerre histories as an intermediate structure, we also construct a bijection between a class of permutations of length $2n-1$ known to be counted by $g_n$ invented by D…
A universal cycle (u-cycle) is a compact listing of a collection of combinatorial objects. In this paper, we use natural encodings of these objects to show the existence of u-cycles for collections of subsets, matroids, restricted multisets, chains of subsets, multichains, and lattice paths. For subsets, we show that a u-cycle exists for the $k$-subsets of an $n$-set if we let $k$ vary in a non zero length interval. We use this result to construct a "covering" of length $(1+o(1))$$n \choose k$ for all subsets of $[n]$ of size exactly $k$ with a specific formula for the $o(1)$ term. We also sho…
Combinatorial classes T that are recursively defined using combinations of the standard multiset, sequence, directed cycle and cycle constructions, and their restrictions, have generating series T(z) with a positive radius of convergence; for most of these a simple test can be used to quickly show that the form of the asymptotics is the same as that for the class of rooted trees: C ρ^{-n} n^{-3/2} where ρis the radius of convergence of T.
A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian, this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as generalized deBruijn cycles or U-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. We extend the body of known results by presenting new results on the existence of universal cycles of monotone, "augmented onto", and Lipschitz functions in addition to universal cycles of certain types of lattice paths and random walks.
We discuss results dealing with universal cycles (u-cycles) and $s$-overlap cycles, and contribute to the body of those results by proving existence of universal cycles of naturally labeled posets (NL posets), $s$-overlap cycles of words of weight $k$, and juggling patterns. The result on posets is, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of the existence of a u-cycle whose length is unknown.
Universal cycle for $k$-permutations is a cyclic arrangement in which each $k$-permutation appears exactly once as $k$ consecutive elements. Enumeration problem of universal cycles for $k$-permutations is discussed and one new enumerating method is proposed in this paper. Accurate enumerating formulae are provided when $k=2,3$.
A universal cycle for permutations of length $n$ is a cyclic word or permutation, any factor of which is order-isomorphic to exactly one permutation of length $n$, and containing all permutations of length $n$ as factors. It is well known that universal cycles for permutations of length $n$ exist. However, all known ways to construct such cycles are rather complicated. For example, in the original paper establishing the existence of the universal cycles, constructing such a cycle involves finding an Eulerian cycle in a certain graph and then dealing with partially ordered sets. In this paper, …
In this paper, we introduce a method of constructing Universal Cycles on sets by taking "sums" and "products" of smaller cycles. We demonstrate this new approach by proving that if there exist Universal Cycles on the 4-subsets of [18] and the 4-subsets of [26], then for any integer n which is greater than or equal 18 and equivalent to 2 mod 8, there exists a Universal Cycle on the 4-subsets of [n].
A universal cycle for permutations is a word of length n! such that each of the n! possible relative orders of n distinct integers occurs as a cyclic interval of the word. We show how to construct such a universal cycle in which only n+1 distinct integers are used. This is best possible and proves a conjecture of Chung, Diaconis and Graham.
A universal cycle is a compact listing of a class of combinatorial objects. In this paper, we prove the existence of universal cycles of classes of labeled graphs, including simple graphs, trees, graphs with m edges, graphs with loops, graphs with multiple edges (with up to m duplications of each edge), directed graphs, hypergraphs, and k-uniform hypergraphs.
It is well known that Universal Cycles of $k$-letter words on an $n$-letter alphabet exist for all $k$ and $n$. In this paper, we prove that Universal Cycles exist for restricted classes of words, including: non-bijections, equitable words (under suitable restrictions), ranked permutations, and "passwords".
A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian; this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as deBruijn cycles or $U$-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. We present new results on the existence of universal cycles of certain classes of functions. These include onto functions, and 1-inequitable sequences on a binary alphabet. In each case the connectedness of the underlying graph is the non-trivial aspect to be established.
Let $\textbf{T}(n,k)$ be the set of strings of length $n$ over the alphabet $Σ=\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$. A universal cycle for $\textbf{T}(n,k)$ can be constructed using a greedy algorithm: start with the string $k^n$, and continually append the least symbol possible without repeating a substring of length $n$. This construction also creates universal cycles for some subsets $\textbf{S}\subseteq\textbf{T}(n,k)$; we will classify all such subsets that are closed under rotations.
A universal cycle, or u-cycle, for a given set of words is a circular word that contains each word from the set exactly once as a contiguous subword. The celebrated de Bruijn sequences are a particular case of such a u-cycle, where a set in question is the set $A^n$ of all words of length $n$ over a $k$-letter alphabet $A$. A universal word, or u-word, is a linear, i.e. non-circular, version of the notion of a u-cycle, and it is defined similarly. Removing some words in $A^n$ may, or may not, result in a set of words for which u-cycle, or u-word, exists. The goal of this paper is to study the …
We study universal cycles of the set ${\cal P}(n,k)$ of $k$-partitions of the set $[n]:=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ and prove that the transition digraph associated with ${\cal P}(n,k)$ is Eulerian. But this does not imply that universal cycles (or ucycles) exist, since vertices represent equivalence classes of partitions! We use this result to prove, however, that ucycles of ${\cal P}(n,k)$ exist for all $n \geq 3$ when $k=2$. We reprove that they exist for odd $n$ when $k = n-1$ and that they do not exist for even $n$ when $k = n-1$. An infinite family of $(n,k)$ for which ucycles do not exist is show…
Universal Cycles, or U-cycles, as originally defined by de Bruijn, are an efficient method to exhibit a large class of combinatorial objects in a compressed fashion, and with no repeats. de Bruijn's theorem states that U-cycles for $n$ letter words on a $k$ letter alphabet exist for all $k$ and $n$. Much has already been proved about Universal Cycles for a variety of other objects. This work is intended to augment the current research in the area by exhibiting U-cycles for {\it complementary classes}. Results will be presented that exhibit the existence of U-cycles for class-alternating words …
We present sufficient conditions for when an ordering of universal cycles $α_1, α_2, \ldots, α_m$ for disjoint sets $\mathbf{S}_1, \mathbf{S}_2, \ldots , \mathbf{S}_m$ can be concatenated together to obtain a universal cycle for $\mathbf{S} = \mathbf{S}_1 \cup \mathbf{S}_2 \cup \cdots \cup \mathbf{S}_m$. When $\mathbf{S}$ is the set of all $k$-ary strings of length $n$, the result of such a successful construction is a de Bruijn sequence. Our conditions are applied to generalize two previously known de Bruijn sequence constructions and then they are applied to develop three new de Bruijn seque…
Let S be a cyclic n-ary sequence. We say that S is a {\it universal cycle} ((n,k)-Ucycle) for k-subsets of [n] if every such subset appears exactly once contiguously in S, and is a Ucycle packing if every such subset appears at most once. Few examples of Ucycles are known to exist, so the relaxation to packings merits investigation. A family {S_n} of (n,k)-Ucycle packings for fixed k is a near-Ucycle if the length of S_n is $(1-o(1))\binom{n}{k}$. In this paper we prove that near-(n,k)-Ucycles exist for all k.
A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian; this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as ucycles or generalized deBruijn cycles or U-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. The existence of ucycles is often dependent on the specific representation that we use for the combinatorial objects. For example, should we represent the subset $\{2,5\}$ of $\{1,2,3,4,5\}$ as "25" in a linear string? Is the representation "52" acceptable? Or it it tactically advantageous (and acceptable) to go with $\{0,…
This paper initiates the study of shortening universal cycles (u-cycles) and universal words (u-words) for permutations either by using incomparable elements, or by using non-deterministic symbols. The latter approach is similar in nature to the recent relevant studies for the de Bruijn sequences. A particular result we obtain in this paper is that u-words for $n$-permutations exist of lengths $n!+(1-k)(n-1)$ for $k=0,1,\ldots,(n-2)!$.
Steiner quadruple systems are set systems in which every triple is contained in a unique quadruple. It is will known that Steiner quadruple systems of order v, or SQS(v), exist if and only if v = 2, 4 mod 6. Universal cycles, introduced by Chung, Diaconis, and Graham in 1992, are a type of cyclic Gray code. Overlap cycles are generalizations of universal cycles that were introduced in 2010 by Godbole. Using Hanani's SQS constructions, we show that for every v = 2, 4 mod 6 with v > 4 there exists an SQS(v) that admits a 1-overlap cycle.
Universal cycles are generalizations of de Bruijn cycles and Gray codes that were introduced originally by Chung, Diaconis, and Graham in 1990. They have been developed by many authors since, for various combinatorial objects such as strings, subsets, permutations, partitions, vector spaces, and designs. One generalization of universal cycles, which require almost complete overlap of consecutive words, is s-overlap cycles, which relax such a constraint. In this paper we study weak orders, which are relations that are transitive and complete. We prove the existence of universal and s-overlap cy…
A number of applications of Steiner triple systems (e.g. disk erasure codes) exist that require a special ordering of its blocks. Universal cycles, introduced by Chung, Diaconis, and Graham in 1992, and Gray codes are examples of listing elements of a combinatorial family in a specific manner, and Godbole invented the following generalization of these in 2010. 1-overlap cycles require a set of strings to be ordered so that the last letter of one string is the first letter of the next. In this paper, we prove the existence of 1-overlap cycles for automorphism free Steiner triple systems of each…
A new ordering, extending the notion of universal cycles of Chung {\em et al.} (1992), is proposed for the blocks of $k$-uniform set systems. Existence of minimum coverings of pairs by triples that possess such an ordering is established for all orders. Application to the construction of short 2-radius sequences is given, with some new 2-radius sequences found through computer search.
We introduce the notion of unavoidable (complete) sets of word patterns, which is a refinement for that of words, and study certain numerical characteristics for unavoidable sets of patterns. In some cases we employ the graph of pattern overlaps introduced in this paper, which is a subgraph of the de Bruijn graph and which we prove to be Hamiltonian. In other cases we reduce a problem under consideration to known facts on unavoidable sets of words. We also give a relation between our problem and intensively studied universal cycles, and prove there exists a universal cycle for word patterns of…
Universal cycles are generalizations of de Bruijn cycles and Gray codes that were introduced originally by Chung, Diaconis, and Graham in 1992. They have been developed by many authors since, for various combinatorial objects such as strings, subsets, permutations, partitions, vector spaces, and designs. One generalization of universal cycles, which require almost complete overlap of consecutive words, is $s$-overlap cycles, which relax such a constraint. In this paper we study permutations and some closely related class of strings, namely juggling sequences and functions. We prove the existen…
We show that for two quivers without oriented cycles related by a BGP reflection, the posets of their cluster tilting objects are related by a simple combinatorial construction, which we call a flip-flop. We deduce that the posets of cluster tilting objects of derived equivalent path algebras of quivers without oriented cycles are universally derived equivalent. In particular, all Cambrian lattices corresponding to the various orientations of the same Dynkin diagram are universally derived equivalent.
