arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Yassine El Maazouz.
We investigate determinantal varieties for symmetric matrices that have zero blocks along the main diagonal. In theoretical physics, these arise as Gram matrices for kinematic variables in quantum field theories. We study the ideals of relations among functions in the matrix entries that serve as building blocks for conformal correlators.
The tropicalization of a linear space over a non-archimedean field is a tropical linear space. In this paper, we present a method for computing the tropicalization of any lattice over a valuation ring. The resulting tropical semimodule is the support of a polyhedral complex constructed from a certain multilinear polynomial we call the entropy polynomial. The key idea in our argument is the tropicalization of Haar measures on lattices over local fields.
The spinor-helicity formalism in particle physics gives rise to natural subvarieties in the product of two Grassmannians. These include two-step flag varieties for subspaces of complementary dimension. Taking Hadamard products leads to Mandelstam varieties. We study these varieties through the lens of combinatorics and commutative algebra, and we explore their tropicalization, positive geometry, and scattering correspondence.
We present a formulation of the three- and four-point amplitudes on the Coulomb branch of N=4 SYM as integrals over the symplectic Grassmannian. We demonstrate that their kinematic spaces are equivalent to symplectic Grassmannians SpGr(n,2n). For the three-point case, we express the amplitude as an integral over the symplectic Grassmannian in a specific little group frame. In the four-point case, we show that the integral yields the amplitude up to a known kinematic factor. Building on the four-dimensional analysis, we also express the six-dimensional N = (1,1) SYM amplitude in terms of four-dimensional variables in a form that makes its symplectic Grassmannian structure manifest.
We present a method for sampling points from an algebraic manifold, either affine or projective, defined over a local field, with a prescribed probability distribution. Inspired by the work of Breiding and Marigliano on sampling real algebraic manifolds, our approach leverages slicing the given variety with random linear spaces of complementary dimension. We also provide an implementation of this sampling technique and demonstrate its applicability to various contexts, including sampling from linear $p$-adic algebraic groups, abelian varieties, and modular curves.
The Plücker positive region $\mathrm{OGr}_+(k,2k)$ of the orthogonal Grassmannian emerged as the positive geometry behind the ABJM scattering amplitudes. In this paper we initiate the study of the positive orthogonal Grassmannian $\mathrm{OGr}_+(k,n)$ for general values of $k,n$. We determine the boundary structure of the quadric $\mathrm{OGr}_+(1,n)$ in $\mathbb{P}^{n-1}_{+}$ and show that it is a positive geometry. We show that $\mathrm{OGr}_+(k,2k+1)$ is isomorphic to $\mathrm{OGr}_+(k+1, 2k+2)$ and connect its combinatorial structure to matchings on $[2k+2]$. Finally, we show that in the case $n>2k+1$, the \emph{positroid cells} of $\mathrm{Gr}_+(k,n)$ do not induce a CW cell decomposition of $\mathrm{OGr}_+(k,n)$.
A matrix is totally positive if all of its minors are positive. This notion of positivity coincides with the type A version of Lusztig's more general total positivity in reductive real-split algebraic groups. Since skew-symmetric matrices always have nonpositive entries, they are not totally positive in the classical sense. The space of skew-symmetric matrices is an affine chart of the orthogonal Grassmannian $\mathrm{OGr}(n,2n)$. Thus, we define a skew-symmetric matrix to be totally positive if it lies in the totally positive orthogonal Grassmannian. We provide a positivity criterion for these matrices in terms of a fixed collection of minors, and show that their Pfaffians have a remarkable sign pattern. The totally positive orthogonal Grassmannian is a CW cell complex and is subdivided into Richardson cells. We introduce a method to determine which cell a given point belongs to in terms of its associated matroid.
We study the topology of the moduli space of unramified $\mathbb{Z}/p$-covers of tropical curves of genus $g \geq 2$, where $p$ is a prime number. We use recent techniques by Chan--Galatius--Payne to identify contractible subcomplexes of the moduli space. We then use this contractibility result to show that this moduli space is simply connected. In the case of genus 2, we determine the homotopy type of this moduli space for all primes $p$. This work is motivated by prospective applications to the top-weight cohomology of the space of prime cyclic étale covers of smooth algebraic curves.
We express the reduction types of Picard curves in terms of tropical invariants associated to binary quintics. We also give a general framework for tropical invariants associated to group actions on arbitrary varieties. The problem of finding tropical invariants for binary forms fits in this general framework by mapping the space of binary forms to symmetrized versions of the Deligne-Mumford compactification $\overline{M}_{0,n}$.
The factorially normalized Bernoulli polynomials $b_n(x) = B_n(x)/n!$ are known to be characterized by $b_0(x) = 1$ and $b_n(x)$ for $n >0$ is the antiderivative of $b_{n-1}(x)$ subject to $\int_0^1 b_n(x) dx = 0$. We offer a related characterization: $b_1(x) = x - 1/2$ and $(-1)^{n-1} b_n(x)$ for $n >0$ is the $n$-fold circular convolution of $b_1(x)$ with itself. Equivalently, $1 - 2^n b_n(x)$ is the probability density at $x \in (0,1)$ of the fractional part of a sum of $n$ independent random variables, each with the beta$(1,2)$ probability density $2(1-x)$ at $x \in (0,1)$. This result has a novel combinatorial analog, the {\em Bernoulli clock}: mark the hours of a $2 n$ hour clock by a uniform random permutation of the multiset $\{1,1, 2,2, \ldots, n,n\}$, meaning pick two different hours uniformly at random from the $2 n$ hours and mark them $1$, then pick two different hours uniformly at random from the remaining $2 n - 2$ hours and mark them $2$, and so on. Starting from hour $0 = 2n$, move clockwise to the first hour marked $1$, continue clockwise to the first hour marked $2$, and so on, continuing clockwise around the Bernoulli clock until the first of the two hours marked $n$ is encountered, at a random hour $I_n$ between $1$ and $2n$. We show that for each positive integer $n$, the event $( I_n = 1)$ has probability $(1 - 2^n b_n(0))/(2n)$, where $n! b_n(0) = B_n(0)$ is the $n$th Bernoulli number. For $ 1 \le k \le 2 n$, the difference $δ_n(k):= 1/(2n) - ¶( I_n = k)$ is a polynomial function of $k$ with the surprising symmetry $δ_n( 2 n + 1 - k) = (-1)^n δ_n(k)$, which is a combinatorial analog of the well known symmetry of Bernoulli polynomials $b_n(1-x) = (-1)^n b_n(x)$.
In this paper, we study linear spaces of matrices defined over discretely valued fields and discuss their dimension and minimal rank drops over the associated residue fields. To this end, we take first steps into the theory of rank-metric codes over discrete valuation rings by means of skew algebras derived from Galois extensions of rings. Additionally, we model projectivizations of rank-metric codes via Mustafin varieties, which we then employ to give sufficient conditions for a decrease in the dimension.
We study lines on smooth cubic surfaces over the field of $p$-adic numbers, from a theoretical and computational point of view. Segre showed that the possible counts of such lines are $0,1,2,3,5,7,9,15$ or $27$. We show that each of these counts is achieved. Probabilistic aspects are also investigated by sampling both $p$-adic and real cubic surfaces from different distributions and estimating the probability of each count. We link this to recent results on probabilistic enumerative geometry. Some experimental results on the Galois groups attached to $p$-adic cubic surfaces are also discussed.
Bolytropes are bounded subsets of an affine building that consist of all points that have distance at most $r$ from some polytrope. We prove that the points of a bolytrope describe the set of all invariant lattices of a bolytrope order, generalizing the correspondence between polytropes and graduated orders.
We exhibit the analog of the entropy map for multivariate Gaussian distributions on local fields. As in the real case, the image of this map lies in the supermodular cone and it determines the distribution of the valuation vector. In general, this map can be defined for non-archimedian valued fields whose valuation group is an additive subgroup of the real line, and it remains supermodular. We also explicitly compute the image of this map in dimension 3.
We apply tropical geometry to study matrix algebras over a field with valuation. Using the shapes of min-max convexity, known as polytropes, we revisit the graduated orders introduced by Plesken and Zassenhaus. These are classified by the polytrope region. We advance the ideal theory of graduated orders by introducing their ideal class polytropes. This article emphasizes examples and computations. It offers first steps in the geometric combinatorics of endomorphism rings of configurations in affine buildings.
This paper aims to lay the foundations for statistics over local fields, such as the field of $p$-adic numbers. Over such fields, we give characterizations for maximum likelihood estimation and conditional independence for multivariate Gaussian distributions. We also give a bijection between the tropicalization of such Gaussian measures in dimension 2 and supermodular functions on the 2-dimensional discrete cube. Finally, we introduce the Bruhat-Tits building as a parameter space for Gaussian distributions and discuss their connections to conditional independence statements as an open problem.