The Greedy Algorithm and Coxeter Matroids

The notion of matroid has been generalized to Coxeter matroid by Gelfand and Serganova. To each pair (W, P) consisting of a finite irreducible Coxeter group W and parabolic subgroup P is associated a collection of objects called Coxeter matroids. The (ordinary) matroids are a special case, the case W = A (isomorphic to the symmetric group Sym_{_n+1}) and P a maximal parabolic subgroup. The main result of this paper is that for Coxeter matroids, just as for ordinary matroids, the greedy algorithm provides a solution to a naturally associated combinatorial optimization problem. Indeed, in many important cases, Coxeter matroids are characterized by this property. This result generalizes the classical Rado-Edmonds and Gale theorems.A corollary of our theorem is that, for Coxeter matroids L, the greedy algorithm solves the L-assignment problem. Let W be a finite group acting as linear transformations on a Euclidean space , and let

Coxeter matroid polytopes

If Δ is a polytope in real affine space, each edge of Δ determines a reflection in the perpendicular bisector of the edge. The exchange groupW (Δ) is the group generated by these reflections, and Δ is a (Coxeter) matroid polytope if this group is finite. This simple concept of matroid polytope turns out to be an equivalent way to define Coxeter matroids. The Gelfand-Serganova Theorem and the structure of the exchange group both give us information about the matroid polytope. We then specialize this information to the case of ordinary matroids; the matroid polytope by our definition in this case turns out to be a facet of the classical matroid polytope familiar to matroid theorists. This work was supported in part by NSA grant MDA904-95-1-1056.     

Symplectic Matroids

A symplectic matroid is a collection B of k-element subsets of J = {1, 2, ..., n, 1*, 2*, ...; n*}, each of which contains not both of i and i* for every i n, and which has the additional property that for any linear ordering of J such that i j implies j* i* and i j* implies j i* for all i, j n, B has a member which dominates element-wise every other member of B. Symplectic matroids are a special case of Coxeter matroids, namely the case where the Coxeter group is the hyperoctahedral group, the group of symmetries of the n-cube. In this paper we develop the basic properties of symplectic matroids in a largely self-contained and elementary fashion. Many of these results are analogous to results for ordinary matroids (which are Coxeter matroids for the symmetric group), yet most are not generalizable to arbitrary Coxeter matroids. For example, representable symplectic matroids arise from totally isotropic subspaces of a symplectic space very similarly to the way in which representable ordinary matroids arise from a subspace of a vector space. We also examine Lagrangian matroids, which are the special case of symplectic matroids where k = n, and which are equivalent to Bouchet's symmetric matroids or 2-matroids.     

A Characterization of the Simply-Laced FC-Finite Coxeter Groups

We call an element of a Coxeter group fully covering (or a fully covering element) if its length is equal to the number of the elements it covers in the Bruhat ordering. It is easy to see that the notion of fully covering is a generalization of the notion of a 321-avoiding permutation and that a fully covering element is a fully commutative element. Also, we call a Coxeter group bi-full if its fully commutative elements coincide with its fully covering elements. We show that the bi-full Coxeter groups are the ones of type A_n, D_n, E_n with no restriction on n. In other words, Coxeter groups of type E₉, E₁₀,.... are also bi-full. According to a result of Fan, a Coxeter group is a simply-laced FC-finite Coxeter group if and only if it is a bi-full Coxeter group.AMS Subject Classification: 06A07, 20F55.     

Coxeter polytopes with a unique pair of non-intersecting facets

We consider compact hyperbolic Coxeter polytopes whose Coxeter diagram contains a unique dotted edge. We prove that such a polytope in d-dimensional hyperbolic space has at most d+3 facets. In view of results by Kaplinskaja [I.M. Kaplinskaya, Discrete groups generated by reflections in the faces of simplicial prisms in Lobachevskian spaces, Math. Notes 15 (1974) 88-91] and the second author [P. Tumarkin, Compact hyperbolic Coxeter n-polytopes with n+3 facets, Electron. J. Combin. 14 (2007), R69, 36 pp.], this implies that compact hyperbolic Coxeter polytopes with a unique pair of non-intersecting facets are completely classified. They do exist only up to dimension 6 and in dimension 8.     

Reflection Independence in Even Coxeter Groups

If (W,S) is a Coxeter system, then an element of W is a reflection if it is conjugate to some element of S. To each Coxeter system there is an associated Coxeter diagram. A Coxeter system is called reflection preserving if every automorphism of W preserves reflections in this Coxeter system. As a direct application of our main theorem, we classify all reflection preserving even Coxeter systems. More generally, if (W,S) is an even Coxeter system, we give a combinatorial condition on the diagram for (W,S) that determines whether or not two even systems for W have the same set of reflections. If (W,S) is even and (W,S) is not even, then these systems do not have the same set of reflections. A Coxeter group is said to be reflection independent if any two Coxeter systems (W,S) and (W,S) have the same set of reflections. We classify all reflection independent even Coxeter groups.Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000). 20F05, 20F55, 20F65, 51F15.     

A subalgebra of 0-Hecke algebra

Let (W,I) be a finite Coxeter group. In the case where W is a Weyl group, Berenstein and Kazhdan in [A. Berenstein, D. Kazhdan, Geometric and unipotent crystals. II. From unipotent bicrystals to crystal bases, in: Quantum Groups, in: Contemp. Math., vol. 433, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2007, pp. 13–88] constructed a monoid structure on the set of all subsets of I using unipotent χ-linear bicrystals. In this paper, we will generalize this result to all types of finite Coxeter groups (including non-crystallographic types). Our approach is more elementary, based on some combinatorics of Coxeter groups. Moreover, we will calculate this monoid structure explicitly for each type.     

Matroid Polytopes and their Volumes

We express the matroid polytope P _M of a matroid M as a signed Minkowski sum of simplices, and obtain a formula for the volume of P _M . This gives a combinatorial expression for the degree of an arbitrary torus orbit closure in the Grassmannian Gr _k,n . We then derive analogous results for the independent set polytope and the underlying flag matroid polytope of M. Our proofs are based on a natural extension of Postnikov’s theory of generalized permutohedra.     

The Enumeration of Coxeter Elements

Let (W,S, ) be a Coxeter system: a Coxeter group W with S its distinguished generator set and its Coxeter graph. In the present paper, we always assume that the cardinality l=|S| ofS is finite. A Coxeter element of W is by definition a product of all generators s S in any fixed order. We use the notation C(W) to denote the set of all the Coxeter elements in W. These elements play an important role in the theory of Coxeter groups, e.g., the determination of polynomial invariants, the Poincaré polynomial, the Coxeter number and the group order of W (see [1–5] for example). They are also important in representation theory (see [6]). In the present paper, we show that the set C(W) is in one-to-one correspondence with the setC() of all acyclic orientations of . Then we use some graph-theoretic tricks to compute the cardinality c(W) of the setC(W) for any Coxeter group W. We deduce a recurrence formula for this number. Furthermore, we obtain some direct formulae of c(W) for a large family of Coxeter groups, which include all the finite, affine and hyperbolic Coxeter groups.The content of the paper is organized as below. In Section 1, we discuss some properties of Coxeter elements for simplifying the computation of the value c(W). In particular, we establish a bijection between the sets C(W) andC() . Then among the other results, we give a recurrence formula of c(W) in Section 2. Subsequently we deduce some closed formulae of c(W) for certain families of Coxeter groups in Section 3.     

On Growth Types of Quotients of Coxeter Groups by Parabolic Subgroups

The principal objects studied in this note are infinite, non-affine Coxeter groups W. A well-known result of de la Harpe asserts that such groups have exponential growth. We study the growth type of quotients of W by parabolic subgroups and by a certain class of reflection subgroups. Our main result is that these quotients have exponential growth as well.     

Facial structures of lattice path matroid polytopes

A lattice path matroid is a transversal matroid corresponding to a pair of lattice paths on the plane. A matroid base polytope is the polytope whose vertices are the incidence vectors of the bases of the given matroid. In this paper, we study the facial structures of matroid base polytopes corresponding to lattice path matroids. In the case of a border strip, we show that all faces of a lattice path matroid polytope can be described by certain subsets of deletions, contractions, and direct sums. In particular, we express them in terms of the lattice path obtained from the border strip. Subsequently, the facial structures of a lattice path matroid polytope for a general case are explained in terms of certain tilings of skew shapes inside the given region.     

A Decomposition of the Descent Algebra of a Finite Coxeter Group

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First we aim to unify previous work by the first two authors, A. Garsia, and C. Reutenauer (see [2], [3], [4], [5] and [10]) on the structure of the descent algebras of the Coxeter groups of type A _n and B _n. But we shall also extend these results to the descent algebra of an arbitrary finite Coxeter group W. The descent algebra, introduced by Solomon in [14], is a subalgebra of the group algebra of W. It is closely related to the subring of the Burnside ring B(W) spanned by the permutation representations W/W _J, where the W _J are the parabolic subgroups of W. Specifically, our purpose is to lift a basis of primitive idempotents of the parabolic Burnside algebra to a basis of idempotents of the descent algebra.     

Chordal Coxeter groups

A solution of the isomorphism problem is presented for the class of Coxeter groups W that have a finite set of Coxeter generators S such that the underlying graph of the presentation diagram of the system (W,S) has the property that every cycle of length at least four has a chord. As an application, we construct counterexamples to two conjectures concerning the isomorphism problem for Coxeter groups.      

Mod 2 cohomology of combinatorial Grassmannians

Matroid bundles, introduced by MacPherson, are combinatorial analogues of real vector bundles. This paper sets up the foundations of matroid bundles. It defines a natural transformation from isomorphism classes of real vector bundles to isomorphism classes of matroid bundles. It then gives a transformation from matroid bundles to spherical quasifibrations, by showing that the geometric realization of a matroid bundle is a spherical quasifibration. The poset of oriented matroids of a fixed rank classifies matroid bundles, and the above transformations give a splitting from topology to combinatorics back to topology. A consequence is that the mod 2 cohomology of the poset of rank k oriented matroids (this poset classifies matroid bundles) contains the free polynomial ring on the first k Stiefel-Whitney classes.     

K(π 1)'s for Artin Groups of Finite Type

We construct K( 1)'s for Artin groups of type C _n and D _n , using the lattice of elements preceding a Coxeter element in the partial order defined by reflection length.     

On hyperbolic Coxeter polytopes with mutually intersecting facets

We prove that, apart from some well-known low-dimensional examples, any compact hyperbolic Coxeter polytope has a pair of disjoint facets. This is one of very few known general results concerning combinatorics of compact hyperbolic Coxeter polytopes. We also obtain a similar result for simple non-compact polytopes.     

Boundaries of Coxeter Matroids

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, for a finite Coxeter groupW, the mod 2 boundary operator on the space of all Coxeter matroids (also known asWP-matroids) forWandP, wherePvaries through all the proper standard parabolic subgroups ofW(Theorem 3 of the paper). A remarkably simple interpretation of Coxeter matroids as certain sets of faces of the generalized permutahedron associated with the Coxeter groupW(Theorem 1) yields a natural definition of the boundary of a Coxeter matroid. The latter happens to be a union of Coxeter matroids for maximal standard parabolic subgroupsQ_iofP(Theorem 2). These results have very natural interpretations in the case of ordinary matroids and flag-matroids (Section 3).     

On outer automorphism groups of coxeter groups

Summary It is shown that the outer automorphism group of a Coxeter groupW of finite rank is finite if the Coxeter graph contains no infinite bonds. A key step in the proof is to show that if the group is irreducible andΠ ₁ andΠ ₂ any two bases of the root system ofW, thenΠ ₂ = ±ωΠ ₁ for some ω εW. The proof of this latter fact employs some properties of the dominance order on the root system introduced by Brink and Howlett. This article was processed by the author using the Springer-Verlag TEX PJour1g macro package 1991.     

Permutahedra and generalized associahedra

Given a finite Coxeter system (W,S) and a Coxeter element c, or equivalently an orientation of the Coxeter graph of W, we construct a simple polytope whose outer normal fan is N. Reading's Cambrian fan Fc, settling a conjecture of Reading that this is possible. We call this polytope the c-generalized associahedron. Our approach generalizes Loday's realization of the associahedron (a type A c-generalized associahedron whose outer normal fan is not the cluster fan but a coarsening of the Coxeter fan arising from the Tamari lattice) to any finite Coxeter group. A crucial role in the construction is played by the c-singleton cones, the cones in the c-Cambrian fan which consist of a single maximal cone from the Coxeter fan.Moreover, if W is a Weyl group and the vertices of the permutahedron are chosen in a lattice associated to W, then we show that our realizations have integer coordinates in this lattice.