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Liza Jacoby

Publications and source records attributed to Liza Jacoby.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

On the scramble number of graphs

The scramble number of a graph is an invariant recently developed to aid in the study of divisorial gonality. In this paper we prove that scramble number is NP-hard to compute, also providing a proof that computing gonality is NP-hard even for simple graphs, as well as for metric graphs. We also provide general lower bounds for the scramble number of a Cartesian product of graphs, and apply these to compute gonality for many new families of product graphs.

math.CO

Prism graphs in tropical plane curves

Any smooth tropical plane curve contains a distinguished trivalent graph called its skeleton. In 2020 Morrison and Tewari proved that the so-called big face graphs cannot be the skeleta of tropical curves for genus $12$ and greater. In this paper we answer an open question they posed to extend their result to the prism graphs, proving that they are the skeleton of a smooth tropical plane curve precisely when the genus is at most $11$. Our main tool is a classification of lattice polygons with two points than can simultaneously view all others, without having any one point that can observe all others.

math.AG

Moduli dimensions of lattice polygons

Given a lattice polygon $P$ with $g$ interior lattice points, we associate to it the moduli space of tropical curves of genus $g$ with Newton polygon $P$. We completely classify the possible dimensions such a moduli space can have. For non-hyperelliptic polygons the dimension must be between $g$ and $2g+1$, and can take on any integer value in this range, with exceptions only in the cases of genus $3$, $4$, and $7$. We provide a similar result for hyperelliptic polygons, for which the range of dimensions is from $g$ to $2g-1$. In the case of non-hyperelliptic polygons, our results also hold for the moduli space of algebraic curves that are non-degenerate with respect to $P$.

math.AG

On finite spacer rank for words and subshifts

We define a notion of rank for words and subshifts that we call spacer rank, extending the notion of rank-one symbolic shifts of Gao and Hill. We construct infinite words of each finite spacer rank, of unbounded spacer rank, and show there exist words that do not have a spacer rank construction. We consider words that are fixed points of substitutions and give explicit conditions for the word to have an at most spacer rank two construction, and not to be rank one. We prove that finite spacer rank subshifts have topological entropy zero, and that there are zero entropy subshifts not defined by a word with a finite spacer rank construction. We also study shift systems associated with infinite words, including those associated to Sturmian sequences, which we show are spacer rank-two systems.

math.DS