arXiv subjects

Caroline J. Klivans

Publications and source records attributed to Caroline J. Klivans.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Domino tilings beyond 2D

There is a rich history of domino tilings in two dimensions. Through a variety of techniques we can answer questions such as: how many tilings are there of a given region or what does the space of all tilings look like? These questions and their answers become significantly more difficult in dimension three and above. Despite this curse of dimensionality, there have been exciting recent advances in the theory. Here we briefly review foundational results of two-dimensional domino tilings and highlight where challenges arise when generalizing to higher dimensions. We then survey results in higher dimensional domino tilings, focusing on the question of connectivity of the space of tilings, and the open problems that still remain.

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arXiv2021

On the connectivity of spaces of three-dimensional tilings

We consider domino tilings of three-dimensional cubiculated manifolds with or without boundary, including subsets of Euclidean space and three-dimensional tori. In particular, we are interested in the connected components of the space of tilings of such regions under local moves. Building on the work of the third and fourth authors, we allow two possible local moves, the flip and trit. These moves are considered with respect to two topological invariants, the twist and flux. Our main result proves that, up to refinement: Two tilings are connected by flips and trits if and only if they have the same flux. Two tilings are connected by flips alone if and only if they have the same flux and twist.

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arXiv2016

Directed rooted forests in higher dimension

For a graph G, the generating function of rooted forests, counted by the number of connected components, can be expressed in terms of the eigenvalues of the graph Laplacian. We generalize this result from graphs to cell complexes of arbitrary dimension. This requires generalizing the notion of rooted forest to higher dimension. We also introduce orientations of higher dimensional rooted trees and forests. These orientations are discrete vector fields which lead to open questions concerning expressing homological quantities combinatorially.

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arXiv2016

A non-partitionable Cohen-Macaulay simplicial complex

A long-standing conjecture of Stanley states that every Cohen-Macaulay simplicial complex is partitionable. We disprove the conjecture by constructing an explicit counterexample. Due to a result of Herzog, Jahan and Yassemi, our construction also disproves the conjecture that the Stanley depth of a monomial ideal is always at least its depth.

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arXiv2015

Scheduling Problems

We introduce the notion of a scheduling problem which is a boolean function $S$ over atomic formulas of the form $x_i \leq x_j$. Considering the $x_i$ as jobs to be performed, an integer assignment satisfying $S$ schedules the jobs subject to the constraints of the atomic formulas. The scheduling counting function counts the number of solutions to $S$. We prove that this counting function is a polynomial in the number of time slots allowed. Scheduling polynomials include the chromatic polynomial of a graph, the zeta polynomial of a lattice, the Billera-Jia-Reiner polynomial of a matroid. To any scheduling problem, we associate not only a counting function for solutions, but also a quasisymmetric function and a quasisymmetric function in non-commuting variables. These scheduling functions include the chromatic symmetric functions of Sagan, Gebhard, and Stanley, and a close variant of Ehrenborg's quasisymmetric function for posets. Geometrically, we consider the space of all solutions to a given scheduling problem. We extend a result of Steingrímmson by proving that the $h$-vector of the space of solutions is given by a shift of the scheduling polynomial. Furthermore, under certain niceness conditions on the defining boolean function, we prove partitionability of the space of solutions and positivity of fundamental expansions of the scheduling quasisymmetric functions and of the $h$-vector of the scheduling polynomial.

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arXiv2015

Simplicial and Cellular Trees

Much information about a graph can be obtained by studying its spanning trees. On the other hand, a graph can be regarded as a 1-dimensional cell complex, raising the question of developing a theory of trees in higher dimension. As observed first by Bolker, Kalai and Adin, and more recently by numerous authors, the fundamental topological properties of a tree --- namely acyclicity and connectedness --- can be generalized to arbitrary dimension as the vanishing of certain cellular homology groups. This point of view is consistent with the matroid-theoretic approach to graphs, and yields higher-dimensional analogues of classical enumerative results including Cayley's formula and the matrix-tree theorem. A subtlety of the higher-dimensional case is that enumeration must account for the possibility of torsion homology in trees, which is always trivial for graphs. Cellular trees are the starting point for further high-dimensional extensions of concepts from algebraic graph theory including the critical group, cut and flow spaces, and discrete dynamical systems such as the abelian sandpile model.

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arXiv2014

Cuts and flows of cell complexes

We study the vector spaces and integer lattices of cuts and flows associated with an arbitrary finite CW complex, and their relationships to group invariants including the critical group of a complex. Our results extend to higher dimension the theory of cuts and flows in graphs, most notably the work of Bacher, de la Harpe and Nagnibeda. We construct explicit bases for the cut and flow spaces, interpret their coefficients topologically, and give sufficient conditions for them to be integral bases of the cut and flow lattices. Second, we determine the precise relationships between the discriminant groups of the cut and flow lattices and the higher critical and cocritical groups with error terms corresponding to torsion (co)homology. As an application, we generalize a result of Kotani and Sunada to give bounds for the complexity, girth, and connectivity of a complex in terms of Hermite's constant.

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arXiv2011

Critical groups of simplicial complexes

We generalize the theory of critical groups from graphs to simplicial complexes. Specifically, given a simplicial complex, we define a family of abelian groups in terms of combinatorial Laplacian operators, generalizing the construction of the critical group of a graph. We show how to realize these critical groups explicitly as cokernels of reduced Laplacians, and prove that they are finite, with orders given by weighted enumerators of simplicial spanning trees. We describe how the critical groups of a complex represent flow along its faces, and sketch another potential interpretation as analogues of Chow groups.

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arXiv2010

Cellular spanning trees and Laplacians of cubical complexes

We prove a Matrix-Tree Theorem enumerating the spanning trees of a cell complex in terms of the eigenvalues of its cellular Laplacian operators, generalizing a previous result for simplicial complexes. As an application, we obtain explicit formulas for spanning tree enumerators and Laplacian eigenvalues of cubes; the latter are integers. We prove a weighted version of the eigenvalue formula, providing evidence for a conjecture on weighted enumeration of cubical spanning trees. We introduce a cubical analogue of shiftedness, and obtain a recursive formula for the Laplacian eigenvalues of shifted cubical complexes, in particular, these eigenvalues are also integers. Finally, we recover Adin's enumeration of spanning trees of a complete colorful simplicial complex from the cellular Matrix-Tree Theorem together with a result of Kook, Reiner and Stanton.

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arXiv2010

Projection volumes of hyperplane arrangements

We prove that for any finite real hyperplane arrangement the average projection volumes of the maximal cones is given by the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of the arrangement. This settles the conjecture of Drton and Klivans that this held for all finite real reflection arrangements. The methods used are geometric and combinatorial. As a consequence we determine that the angle sums of a zonotope are given by the characteristic polynomial of the order dual of the intersection lattice of the arrangement.

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arXiv2009

A Geometric Interpretation of the Characteristic Polynomial of Reflection Arrangements

We consider projections of points onto fundamental chambers of finite real reflection groups. Our main result shows that for groups of type $A_n$, $B_n$, and $D_n$, the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of the reflection arrangement are proportional to the spherical volumes of the sets of points that are projected onto faces of a given dimension. We also provide strong evidence that the same connection holds for the exceptional, and thus all, reflection groups. These results naturally extend those of De Concini and Procesi, Stembridge, and Denham which establish the relationship for 0-dimensional projections. This work is also of interest for the field of order-restricted statistical inference, where projections of random points play an important role.

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arXiv2009

Relations on Generalized Degree Sequences

We study degree sequences for simplicial posets and polyhedral complexes, generalizing the well-studied graphical degree sequences. Here we extend the more common generalization of vertex-to-facet degree sequences by considering arbitrary face-to-flag degree sequences. In particular, these may be viewed as natural refinements of the flag f-vector of the poset. We investigate properties and relations of these generalized degree sequences, proving linear relations between flag degree sequences in terms of the composition of rank jumps of the flag. As a corollary, we recover an f-vector inequality on simplicial posets first shown by Stanley.

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arXiv2008

Simplicial matrix-tree theorems

We generalize the definition and enumeration of spanning trees from the setting of graphs to that of arbitrary-dimensional simplicial complexes $Δ$, extending an idea due to G. Kalai. We prove a simplicial version of the Matrix-Tree Theorem that counts simplicial spanning trees, weighted by the squares of the orders of their top-dimensional integral homology groups, in terms of the Laplacian matrix of $Δ$. As in the graphic case, one can obtain a more finely weighted generating function for simplicial spanning trees by assigning an indeterminate to each vertex of $Δ$ and replacing the entries of the Laplacian with Laurent monomials. When $Δ$ is a shifted complex, we give a combinatorial interpretation of the eigenvalues of its weighted Laplacian and prove that they determine its set of faces uniquely, generalizing known results about threshold graphs and unweighted Laplacian eigenvalues of shifted complexes.

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