Principal minors Pfaffian half-tree theorem

Béatrice de Tilière

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arXiv · 1207.2759

Principal minors Pfaffian half-tree theorem

Béatrice de Tilière

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Abstract

A half-tree is an edge configuration whose superimposition with a perfect matching is a tree. In this paper, we prove a half-tree theorem for the Pfaffian principal minors of a skew-symmetric matrix whose column sum is zero; introducing an explicit algorithm, we fully characterize half-trees involved. This question naturally arose in the context of statistical mechanics where we aimed at relating perfect matchings and trees on the same graph. As a consequence of the Pfaffian half-tree theorem, we obtain a refined version of the matrix-tree theorem in the case of skew-symmetric matrices, as well as a line-bundle version of this result.

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Béatrice de Tilière. 2014-01-20. Principal minors Pfaffian half-tree theorem. https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.2759

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