arXiv subjects

Josse van Dobben de Bruyn

Publications and source records attributed to Josse van Dobben de Bruyn.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Topological and Geometric Perspectives on Homomorphism Indistinguishability

Two graphs $G$ and $H$ are homomorphism indistinguishable over a graph class $\mathcal{F}$ if, for every graph $F \in \mathcal{F}$, the number of homomorphisms from $F$ to $G$ is equal to the number of homomorphisms from $F$ to $H$. Lovász (Acta Mathematica Academiae Scientiarum Hungarica, 1967) showed that two graphs are isomorphic if, and only if, they are homomorphism indistinguishable over all graphs. Subsequently, homomorphism indistinguishability relations of a long list of natural graph classes have been equated with natural graph isomorphism relaxations. Given the wealth of such results, Atserias, Kolaitis, & Wu (LICS 2021) asked for an axiomatic characterisation of homomorphism indistinguishability relations. By exhibiting topological and geometric structure associated with homomorphism indistinguishability, we derive such an axiomatic characterisation. Here, a central ingredient is a novel characterisation of graph parameters of the form $\hom(F, \star)$ for some graph $F$ alternative to a previous result of Lovász & Schrijver (JCTA 2010). Moreover, we investigate the topology of homomorphism indistinguishability and discuss repercussions for the Ulam--Kelly Reconstruction Conjecture.

math.CO↗

arXiv2026

Mermin-Peres magic rectangles modulo odd primes

The Mermin-Peres magic square provides a simple example of a system of linear equations over $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ which has no classical solutions but does have a finite-dimensional operator solution. For a long time, it was not known how to construct similar examples over $\mathbb{Z}/d\mathbb{Z}$ with $d$ odd. In this paper, we construct, for every integer $d \geq 2$, a linear system over $\mathbb{Z}/d\mathbb{Z}$ that has a finite-dimensional operator solution but no classical solution. For an odd prime $p$, our operators act on two $p$-dimensional qudits and generate a finite $p$-group obtained by adjoining diagonal polynomial phase operators to the generalized Pauli group, thereby forming a natural analogue of the Mermin--Peres magic square. Classical inconsistency follows from an elementary linearity argument comparing assignments on abelian subgroups. Furthermore, we prove a sharp threshold for the required degree of the added polynomial phase operators: our construction uses polynomials up to degree $p - 1$, and we show that the group formed by polynomials up to degree $p - 2$ is noncontextual.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Existence and nonexistence of commutativity gadgets for entangled CSPs

Commutativity gadgets allow NP-hardness proofs for classical constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) to be carried over to undecidability proofs for the corresponding entangled CSPs. This has been done, for instance, for NP-complete boolean CSPs and 3-colouring in the work of Culf and Mastel. For many CSPs over larger alphabets, including $k$-colouring when $k \geq 4$, it is not known whether or not commutativity gadgets exist, or if the entangled CSP is decidable. In this paper, we initiate a systematic study of commutativity gadgets and prove the first known obstruction to their existence. We do this by extending the definition of the quantum automorphism group of a graph to the quantum endomorphism monoid of a CSP, and showing that a CSP with non-classical quantum endomorphism monoid does not admit a commutativity gadget. As a consequence of this, we get that no commutativity gadget exists for $k$-colouring when $k \geq 4$. However, we construct a commutativity gadget for an alternate way of presenting $k$-colouring as a nonlocal game, the oracular setting. Furthermore, we prove an easy to check sufficient condition for the quantum endomorphism monoid to be non-classical, extending a result of Schmidt for the quantum automorphism group of a graph, and use this to give examples of CSPs that do not admit a commutativity gadget. We also show that existence of commutativity gadgets and oracular commutativity gadgets is equivalent for graphs with no four-cycle; and that the odd cycles and the odd graphs have a commutative quantum endomorphism monoid, leaving open the possibility that they might admit a commutativity gadget.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Quantum polymorphism characterisation of commutativity gadgets in all quantum models

Commutativity gadgets provide a technique for lifting classical reductions between constraint satisfaction problems to quantum-sound reductions between the corresponding nonlocal games. We develop a general framework for commutativity gadgets in the setting of quantum homomorphisms between finite relational structures. Building on the notion of quantum homomorphism spaces, we introduce a uniform notion of commutativity gadget capturing the finite-dimensional quantum, quantum approximate, and commuting-operator models. In the robust setting, we use the weighted-algebra formalism for approximate quantum homomorphisms to capture corresponding notions of robust commutativity gadgets. Our main results characterize both non-robust and robust commutativity gadgets purely in terms of quantum polymorphism spaces: in any model, existence of a commutativity gadget is equivalent to the collapse of the corresponding quantum polymorphisms to classical ones at arity $|A|^2$, and robust gadgets are characterized by stable commutativity of the appropriate weighted polymorphism algebra. We use this characterisation to show relations between the classes of commutativity gadget, notably that existence of a robust commutativity gadget is equivalent to the existence of a corresponding non-robust one. Finally, we prove that quantum polymorphisms of complete graphs $K_n$ have a very special structure, wherein the noncommutative behaviour only comes from the quantum permutation group $S_n^+$. Combining this with techniques from combinatorial group theory, we construct separations between commutativity-gadget classes: we exhibit a relational structure admitting a finite-dimensional commutativity gadget but no quantum approximate gadget, and, conditional on the existence of a non-hyperlinear group, a structure admitting a quantum approximate commutativity gadget but no commuting-operator gadget.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Asymmetric graphs with quantum symmetry

We present an infinite sequence of finite graphs with trivial automorphism group and non-trivial quantum automorphism group. These are the first known examples of graphs with this property. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, these are the first examples of any asymmetric classical space that has nontrivial quantum symmetries. Our construction is based on solution groups to (binary) linear systems, as defined by Cleve, Liu and Slofstra in the context of non-local games. We first show that the dual quantum group of every solution group occurs as the quantum automorphism group of some graph, and then construct an infinite sequence of systems whose solution groups are nontrivial perfect groups. This leads to the desired sequence of graphs. In addition to our main result, we prove a number of related results that allow us to answer several open problems from the literature. We prove a weak quantum analog of Frucht's theorem, namely that every finite classical group $Γ$ occurs as the quantum automorphism group of a finite graph. Combined with our main result, this shows that, for every finite group $Γ$, there are graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$ that both have classical automorphism group isomorphic to $Γ$ but one of them has quantum symmetry and the other does not. Therefore, the quantum automorphism group of a graph is never determined by its classical automorphism group, and there do not exist any "quantum excluding groups".

math.QA↗

arXiv2025

Free Inhomogeneous Wreath Product of Quantum Groups

We introduce the free inhomogeneous wreath product of compact matrix quantum groups, which generalizes the free wreath product (Bichon 2004). We use this to present a general technique to determine quantum automorphism groups of connected graphs in terms of their maximal biconnected subgraphs, provided that we have sufficient information about their quantum automorphism groups. We show that this requirement is met for forests, outerplanar graphs, and block graphs leading to algorithms to compute the quantum automorphism groups of these graphs.

math.QA↗

arXiv2025

The Archimedean order unitization of seminormed ordered vector spaces

In this paper, we describe a way of turning a seminormed preordered vector space into an Archimedean order unit space. We show that this construction satisfies a universal property similar to that of the Archimedeanization of Paulsen and Tomforde, and we give a number of applications of our result in ordered vector spaces and in matrix ordered operator spaces. In ordered vector spaces, we use our our Archimedean order unitzation to shed new light on normality criteria for seminorms. In matrix ordered operator spaces, we prove several new results about Werner's "partial unitization": we give a simplified "internal" description of the positive cone of Werner's partial unitization, and we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the embedding of a matrix ordered operator space in its partial unitization to be a complete isomorphism. This last result was already announced in Werner's 2002 paper, but to our knowledge no proof exists in the literature.

math.FA↗

arXiv2024

Quantum Sabidussi's Theorem

Sabidussi's theorem [Duke Math. J. 28, 1961] gives necessary and sufficient conditions under which the automorphism group of a lexicographic product of two graphs is a wreath product of the respective automorphism groups. We prove a quantum version of Sabidussi's theorem for finite graphs, with the automorphism groups replaced by quantum automorphism groups and the wreath product replaced by the free wreath product of quantum groups. This extends the result of Chassaniol [J. Algebra 456, 2016], who proved it for regular graphs. Moreover, we apply our result to lexicographic products of quantum vertex transitive graphs, determining their quantum automorphism groups even when Sabidussi's conditions do not apply.

math.QA↗

arXiv2023

Quantum automorphism groups of trees

We give a characterisation of quantum automorphism groups of trees. In particular, for every tree, we show how to iteratively construct its quantum automorphism group using free products and free wreath products. This can be considered a quantum version of Jordan's theorem for the automorphism groups of trees. This is one of the first characterisations of quantum automorphism groups of a natural class of graphs with quantum symmetry.

math.QA↗

arXiv2023

On the size of subsets of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ avoiding solutions to linear systems with repeated columns

Consider a system of $m$ balanced linear equations in $k$ variables with coefficients in $\mathbb{F}_q$. If $k \geq 2m + 1$, then a routine application of the slice rank method shows that there are constants $β,γ\geq 1$ with $γ< q$ such that, for every subset $S \subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^n$ of size at least $β\cdot γ^n$, the system has a solution $(x_1,\ldots,x_k) \in S^k$ with $x_1,\ldots,x_k$ not all equal. Building on a series of papers by Mimura and Tokushige and on a paper by Sauermann, this paper investigates the problem of finding a solution of higher non-degeneracy; that is, a solution where $x_1,\ldots,x_k$ are pairwise distinct, or even a solution where $x_1,\ldots,x_k$ do not satisfy any balanced linear equation that is not a linear combination of the equations in the system. In this paper, we focus on linear systems with repeated columns. For a large class of systems of this type, we prove that there are constants $β,γ\geq 1$ with $γ< q$ such that every subset $S \subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^n$ of size at least $β\cdot γ^n$ contains a solution that is non-degenerate (in one of the two senses described above). This class is disjoint from the class covered by Sauermann's result, and captures the systems studied by Mimura and Tokushige into a single proof. Moreover, a special case of our results shows that, if $S \subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n$ is a subset such that $S - S$ does not contain a non-trivial $k$-term arithmetic progression (with $p$ prime and $3 \leq k \leq p$), then $S$ must have exponentially small density.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Tensor Products of Convex Cones, Part I: Mapping Properties, Faces, and Semisimplicity

The tensor product of two ordered vector spaces can be ordered in more than one way, just as the tensor product of normed spaces can be normed in multiple ways. Two natural orderings have received considerable attention in the past, namely the ones given by the projective and injective (or biprojective) cones. This paper aims to show that these two cones behave similarly to their normed counterparts, and furthermore extends the study of these two cones from the algebraic tensor product to completed locally convex tensor products. The main results in this paper are the following: (i) drawing parallels with the normed theory, we show that the projective/injective cone has mapping properties analogous to those of the projective/injective norm; (ii) we establish direct formulas for the lineality space of the projective/injective cone, in particular providing necessary and sufficient conditions for the cone to be proper; (iii) we show how to construct faces of the projective/injective cone from faces of the base cones, in particular providing a complete characterization of the extremal rays of the projective cone; (iv) we prove that the projective/injective tensor product of two closed proper cones is contained in a closed proper cone (at least in the algebraic tensor product).

math.FA↗

arXiv2022

Tensor Products of Convex Cones

Tensor products of convex cones have recently come up in different areas, ranging from functional analysis and operator theory to approximation theory and theoretical physics. However, most of the existing literature focuses either on Archimedean lattice cones or on closed proper cones in finite-dimensional spaces, thereby excluding many cones, including even standard cones such as an infinite-dimensional positive semidefinite cone. For general cones, results are few and far between, and many basic questions remain unanswered. In this memoir, we develop the theory of tensor products of convex cones in full generality, with no restrictions on the cones or the ambient spaces. We generalize a few known results to the general case, and we prove many results which are altogether new. Our main contributions are: (i) We show that the projective/injective cone has mapping properties analogous to those of the projective/injective norm; (ii) We establish direct formulas for the lineality space of the projective/injective cone; (iii) We prove that the projective/injective tensor product of two closed proper cones is contained in a closed proper cone; (iv) We show how to construct faces of the projective/injective cone from faces of the base cones. As an application, we also show that the tensor product of two symmetric convex sets preserves proper faces; (v) For closed cones in finite-dimensional spaces, we show that the projective cone is closed, and almost always strictly contained in the injective cone, thereby confirming a conjecture of Barker for nearly all convex cones. As this manuscript was being written, this last result was superseded by simultaneous discovery by Aubrun, Lami, Palazuelos and Plávala, who independently proved Barker's conjecture in full generality. We recover their result for a large class of cones, using completely different techniques.

math.FA↗

arXiv2022

Divisorial and geometric gonality of higher-rank tropical curves

We consider a variant of metrised graphs where the edge lengths take values in a commutative monoid, as a higher-rank generalisation of the notion of a tropical curve. Divisorial gonality, which Baker and Norine defined on combinatorial graphs in terms of a chip firing game, is extended to these monoid-metrised graphs. We define geometric gonality of a monoid-metrised graph as the minimal degree of a horizontally conformal, non-degenerate morphism onto an monoid-metrised tree, and prove that geometric gonality is an upper bound for divisorial gonality in the monoid-metrised case. We also show the existence of a subdivision of the underlying graph whose gonality is no larger than the monoid-metrised gonality. We relate this to the minimal degree of a map between logarithmic curves.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

Discrete and metric divisorial gonality can be different

This paper compares the divisorial gonality of a finite graph $G$ to the divisorial gonality of the associated metric graph $Γ(G,\mathbb{1})$ with unit lengths. We show that $\text{dgon}(Γ(G,\mathbb{1}))$ is equal to the minimal divisorial gonality of all regular subdivisions of $G$, and we provide a class of graphs for which this number is strictly smaller than the divisorial gonality of $G$. This settles a conjecture of M. Baker in the negative.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

Almost all positive continuous linear functionals can be extended

Let $F$ be an ordered topological vector space (over $\mathbb{R}$) whose positive cone $F_+$ is weakly closed, and let $E \subseteq F$ be a subspace. We prove that the set of positive continuous linear functionals on $E$ that can be extended (positively and continuously) to $F$ is weak-$*$ dense in the topological dual wedge $E_+'$. Furthermore, we show that this result cannot be generalized to arbitrary positive operators, even in finite-dimensional spaces.

math.FA↗

arXiv2020

Representations and Semisimplicity of Ordered Topological Vector Spaces

This paper studies ways to represent an ordered topological vector space as a space of continuous functions, extending the classical representation theorems of Kadison and Schaefer. Particular emphasis is put on the class of semisimple spaces, consisting of those ordered topological vector spaces that admit an injective positive representation to a space of continuous functions. We show that this class forms a natural topological analogue of the regularly ordered spaces defined by Schaefer in the 1950s, and is characterized by a large number of equivalent geometric, algebraic, and topological properties.

math.FA↗

arXiv2020

Constructing Tree Decompositions of Graphs with Bounded Gonality

In this paper, we give a constructive proof of the fact that the treewidth of a graph is at most its divisorial gonality. The proof gives a polynomial time algorithm to construct a tree decomposition of width at most $k$, when an effective divisor of degree $k$ that reaches all vertices is given. We also give a similar result for two related notions: stable divisorial gonality and stable gonality.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2014

Treewidth is a lower bound on graph gonality

We prove that the (divisorial) gonality of a finite connected graph is lower bounded by its treewidth. We show that equality holds for grid graphs and complete multipartite graphs. We prove that the treewidth lower bound also holds for \emph{metric graphs} by constructing for any positive rank divisor on a metric graph $Γ$ a positive rank divisor of the same degree on a subdivision of the underlying graph. Finally, we show that the treewidth lower bound also holds for a related notion of gonality defined by Caporaso and for stable gonality as introduced by Cornelissen et al.

math.CO↗