arXiv subjects

Mark Kambites

Publications and source records attributed to Mark Kambites.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Face monoid actions and tropical hyperplane arrangements

We study the combinatorics of tropical hyperplane arrangements, and their relationship to (classical) hyperplane face monoids. We show that the refinement operation on the faces of a tropical hyperplane arrangement, introduced by Ardila and Develin in their definition of a tropical oriented matroid, induces an action of the hyperplane face monoid of the classical braid arrangement on the arrangement, and hence on a number of interesting related structures. Along the way, we introduce a new characterization of the types (in the sense of Develin and Sturmfels) of points with respect to a tropical hyperplane arrangement, in terms of partial bijections which attain permanents of submatrices of a matrix which naturally encodes the arrangement.

math.CO↗

arXiv2015

Amenability and geometry of semigroups

We study the connection between amenability, Følner conditions and the geometry of finitely generated semigroups. Using results of Klawe, we show that within an extremely broad class of semigroups (encompassing all groups, left cancellative semigroups, finite semigroups, compact topological semigroups, inverse semigroups, regular semigroups, commutative semigroups and semigroups with a left, right or two-sided zero element), left amenability coincides with the strong Følner condition. Within the same class, we show that a finitely generated semigroup of subexponential growth is left amenable if and only if it is left reversible. We show that the (weak) Følner condition is a left quasi-isometry invariant of finitely generated semigroups, and hence that left amenability is a left quasi-isometry invariant of left cancellative semigroups. We also give a new characterisation of the strong Følner condition, in terms of the existence of weak Følner sets satisfying a local injectivity condition on the relevant translation action of the semigroup.

math.GR↗

arXiv2014

Convexity of tropical polytopes

We study the relationship between min-plus, max-plus and Euclidean convexity for subsets of $\mathbb{R}^n$. We introduce a construction which associates to any max-plus convex set with compact projectivisation a canonical matrix called its dominator. The dominator is a Kleene star whose max-plus column space is the min-plus convex hull of the original set. We apply this to show that a set which is any two of (i) a max-plus polytope, (ii) a min-plus polytope and (iii) a Euclidean polytope must also be the third. In particular, these results answer a question of Sergeev, Schneider and Butkovic and show that row spaces of tropical Kleene star matrices are exactly the "polytropes" studied by Joswig and Kulas.

math.MG↗

arXiv2014

A strong geometric hyperbolicity property for directed graphs and monoids

We introduce and study a strong "thin triangle"' condition for directed graphs, which generalises the usual notion of hyperbolicity for a metric space. We prove that finitely generated left cancellative monoids whose right Cayley graphs satisfy this condition must be finitely presented with polynomial Dehn functions, and hence word problems in NP. Under the additional assumption of right cancellativity (or in some cases the weaker condition of bounded indegree), they also admit algorithms for more fundamentally semigroup-theoretic decision problems such as Green's relations L, R, J, D and the corresponding pre-orders. In contrast, we exhibit a right cancellative (but not left cancellative) finitely generated monoid (in fact, an infinite class of them) whose Cayley graph is a essentially a tree (hence hyperbolic in our sense and probably any reasonable sense), but which is not even recursively presentable. This seems to be strong evidence that no geometric notion of hyperbolicity will be strong enough to yield much information about finitely generated monoids in absolute generality.

math.GR↗

arXiv2014

A large class of sofic monoids

We prove that a monoid is sofic, in the sense recently introduced by Ceccherini-Silberstein and Coornaert, whenever the J-class of the identity is a sofic group, and the quotients of this group by orbit stabilisers in the rest of the monoid are amenable. In particular, this shows that the following are all sofic: cancellative monoids with amenable group of units; monoids with sofic group of units and finitely many non-units; and monoids with amenable Schutzenberger groups and finitely many L-classes in each D-class. This provides a very wide range of sofic monoids, subsuming most known examples (with the notable exception of locally residually finite monoids). We conclude by discussing some aspects of the definition, and posing some questions for future research.

math.GR↗

arXiv2013

The word problem for free adequate semigroups

We study the complexity of computation in finitely generated free left, right and two-sided adequate semigroups and monoids. We present polynomial time (quadratic in the RAM model of computation) algorithms to solve the word problem and compute normal forms in each of these, and hence also to test whether any given identity holds in the classes of left, right and/or two-sided adequate semigroups.

math.RA↗

arXiv2013

Exact rings and semirings

We introduce and study an abstract class of semirings, which we call exact semirings, defined by a Hahn-Banach-type separation property on modules. Our motivation comes from the tropical semiring, and in particular a desire to understand the often surprising extent to which it behaves like a field. The definition of exactness abstracts an elementary property of fields and the tropical semiring, which we believe is fundamental to explaining this similarity. The class of exact semirings turns out to include many other important examples of both rings (proper quotients of principal ideal domains, matrix rings and finite group rings over these and over fields), and semirings (the Boolean semiring, generalisations of the tropical semiring, matrix semirings and group semirings over these).

math.RA↗

arXiv2013

Anisimov's Theorem for inverse semigroups

The idempotent problem of a finitely generated inverse semigroup is the formal language of all words over the generators representing idempotent elements. This note proves that a finitely generated inverse semigroup with regular idempotent problem is necessarily finite. This answers a question of Gilbert and Noonan Heale, and establishes a generalisation to inverse semigroups of Anisimov's Theorem for groups.

math.GR↗

arXiv2012

Quasi-isometry and finite presentations of left cancellative monoids

We show that being finitely presentable and being finitely presentable with solvable word problem are quasi-isometry invariants of finitely generated left cancellative monoids. Our main tool is an elementary, but useful, geometric characterisation of finite presentability for left cancellative monoids. We also give examples to show that this characterisation does not extend to monoids in general, and indeed that properties such as solvable word problem are not isometry invariants for general monoids.

math.GR↗

arXiv2012

Tropical matrix groups

We study the subgroup structure of the semigroup of finitary tropical matrices under multiplication. We show that every maximal subgroup is isomorphic to the full linear automorphism group of a related tropical polytope, and that each of these groups is the direct product of the real numbers with a finite group. We also show that there is a natural and canonical embedding of each full rank maximal subgroup into the group of units of the semigroup of matrices over the tropical semiring with minus infinity. Our results have numerous corollaries, including the fact that every automorphism of a projective (as a module) tropical polytope of full rank extends to an automorphism of the containing space, and that every full rank subgroup has a common eigenvector.

math.GR↗

arXiv2012

Idempotent tropical matrices and finite metric spaces

There is a well known correspondence between the triangle inequality for a distance function on a finite set, and idempotency of an associated matrix over the tropical semiring. Recent research has shed new light on the structure (algebraic, combinatorial and geometric) of tropical idempotents, and in this paper we explore the consequences of this for the metric geometry of tropical polytopes. We prove, for example, that every n-point metric space is realised by the Hilbert projective metric on the vertices of a pure n-dimensional tropical polytope in tropical n-space. More generally, every n-point asymmetric distance function is realised by a residuation operator on the vertices of such a polytope. In the symmetric case, we show that the maximal group of tropical matrices containing the idempotent associated to a metric space is a direct product of the real numbers with the isometry group of the space; it follows that every direct product of a finite group with the real numbers arises as a maximal subgroup of a sufficiently large finitary full tropical matrix semigroup. In the process we also prove some new results about tropical idempotent matrices, and note some semigroup-theoretic consequences which may be of independent interest.

math.RA↗

arXiv2012

Green's J-order and the rank of tropical matrices

We study Green's J-order and J-equivalence for the semigroup of all n-by-n matrices over the tropical semiring. We give an exact characterisation of the J-order, in terms of morphisms between tropical convex sets. We establish connections between the J-order, isometries of tropical convex sets, and various notions of rank for tropical matrices. We also study the relationship between the relations J and D; Izhakian and Margolis have observed that $D \neq J$ for the semigroup of all 3-by-3 matrices over the tropical semiring with $-\infty$, but in contrast, we show that $D = J$ for all full matrix semigroups over the finitary tropical semiring.

math.RA↗

arXiv2010

Tropical matrix duality and Green's D relation

We give a complete description of Green's D relation for the multiplicative semigroup of all n-by-n tropical matrices. Our main tool is a new variant on the duality between the row and column space of a tropical matrix (studied by Cohen, Gaubert and Quadrat and separately by Develin and Sturmfels). Unlike the existing duality theorems, our version admits a converse, and hence gives a necessary and sufficient condition for two tropical convex sets to be the row and column space of a matrix. We also show that the matrix duality map induces an isometry (with respect to the Hilbert projective metric) between the projective row space and projective column space of any tropical matrix, and establish some foundational results about Green's other relations.

math.RA↗

arXiv2010

A Svarc-Milnor lemma for monoids acting by isometric embeddings

We continue our programme of extending key techniques from geometric group theory to semigroup theory, by studying monoids acting by isometric embeddings on spaces equipped with asymmetric, partially-defined distance functions. The canonical example of such an action is a cancellative monoid acting by translation on its Cayley graph. Our main result is an extension of the Svarc-Milnor Lemma to this setting.

math.GR↗

arXiv2009

Uniform decision problems and abstract properties of small overlap monoids

We study the way in which the abstract structure of a small overlap monoid is reflected in, and may be algorithmically deduced from, a small overlap presentation. We show that every C(2) monoid admits an essentially canonical C(2) presentation; by counting canonical presentations we obtain asymptotic estimates for the number of non-isomorphic monoids admitting a-generator, k-relation presentations of a given length. We demonstrate an algorithm to transform an arbitrary presentation for a C(m) monoid (m at least 2) into a canonical C(m) presentation, and a solution to the isomorphism problem for C(2) presentations. We also find a simple combinatorial condition on a C(4) presentation which is necessary and sufficient for the monoid presented to be left cancellative. We apply this to obtain algorithms to decide if a given C(4) monoid is left cancellative, right cancellative or cancellative, and to show that cancellativity properties are asymptotically visible in the sense of generic-case complexity.

math.GR↗

arXiv2009

A note on the definition of small overlap monoids

Small overlap conditions are simple and natural combinatorial conditions on semigroup and monoid presentations, which serve to limit the complexity of derivation sequences between equivalent words in the generators. They were introduced by J.H.Remmers, and more recently have been extensively studied by the present author. However, the definition of small overlap conditions hitherto used by the author was slightly more restrictive than that introduced by Remmers; this note eliminates this discrepancy by extending the recent methods and results of the author to apply to Remmers' small overlap monoids in full generality.

math.GR↗

arXiv2009

Multiplicative structure of 2x2 tropical matrices

We study the algebraic structure of the semigroup of all $2 \times 2$ tropical matrices under multiplication. Using ideas from tropical geometry, we give a complete description of Green's relations and the idempotents and maximal subgroups of this semigroup.

math.GR↗

arXiv2009

Groups acting on semimetric spaces and quasi-isometries of monoids

We study groups acting by length-preserving transformations on spaces equipped with asymmetric, partially-defined distance functions. We introduce a natural notion of quasi-isometry for such spaces and exhibit an extension of the Svarc-Milnor Lemma to this setting. Among the most natural examples of these spaces are finitely generated monoids and semigroups and their Cayley and Schutzenberger graphs; we apply our results to show a number of important properties of monoids are quasi-isometry invariants.

math.GR↗