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).     

Noncommutative algebras associated to complexes and graphs

A new class of noncommutative algebras associated to complexes and graphs is introduced. Algebras associated to one-dimensional complexes are studied.     

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.     

Simulated annealing with noisy or imprecise energy measurements

The annealing algorithm (Ref. 1) is modified to allow for noisy or imprecise measurements of the energy cost function. This is important when the energy cannot be measured exactly or when it is computationally expensive to do so. Under suitable conditions on the noise/imprecision, it is shown that the modified algorithm exhibits the same convergence in probability to the globally minimum energy states as the annealing algorithm (Ref. 2). Since the annealing algorithm will typically enter and exit the minimum energy states infinitely often with probability one, the minimum energy state visited by the annealing algorithm is usually tracked. The effect of using noisy or imprecise energy measurements on tracking the minimum energy state visited by the modified algorithms is examined.The research reported here has been supported under Contracts AFOSR-85-0227, DAAG-29-84-K-0005, and DAAL-03-86-K-0171 and a Purdue Research Initiation Grant.     

GG Functions and their Relations to General Hypergeometric Functions

In this Letter, we present a new approach to the notion of hypergeometric functions.     

The reunions of three dissimilar vicious walkers

We study the behavior of three vicious random walkers which diffuse freely in one dimension witharbitrary diffusivitiesb ₁ ² ,b ₂ ² ,b ₃ ² , except that their paths may not cross. The full distribution function is calculated exactly in the continuum limit; the exponent ₃ governing the decay of the probability of a simultaneousreunion of all three walkers aftern steps is found to varycontinuously according to . This variation has consequences for various interfacial wetting transitions in (1+1) dimensions. It may also be related heuristically to the marginality of direct interface-wall interactions decaying asW ₀/l ² in the intermediate fluctuation regime of (1+1)-dimensional wetting, where exponents varying continuously withW ₀ have recently been found.