Vertically symmetric alternating sign matrices (VSASMs) of order $2n+1$ are known to be equinumerous with lozenge tilings of a hexagon with side lengths $2n+2,2n,2n+2,2n,2n+2,2n$ and a central triangular hole of size $2$ that exhibit a cyclical as well as a vertical symmetry, but finding an explicit bijection proving this belongs to the most difficult problems in bijective combinatorics. Towards constructing such a bijection, we generalize the result by introducing certain natural extensions for both objects along with $n+3$ parameters and show that the multivariate generating functions with respect to these parameters coincide. This is a significant step from a constant number of equidistributed statistics to a linear number of statistics in n. The equinumeracy of VSASMs and the lozenge tilings is then an easy consequence of this result, which is obtained by specializing the generating functions to signed enumerations for both types of objects and then applying certain sign-reversing involutions. Another main result concerns the expansion of the multivariate generating function into symplectic characters as a sum over totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions, which is in perfect analogy to the situation for ordinary ASMs where the Schur expansion can be written as a sum over totally symmetric plane partitions. This is exciting as it is reminiscent of the well-known Cauchy identity, and the Cauchy identity does have a bijective proof using the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence, and thus the result raises the question of whether there is a variation of the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence that does eventually lead to a bijective proof.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate both analytically and numerically the interplay of two fundamentally distinct non-Hermitian mechanisms in the deep subwavelength regime. Considering a parity-time symmetric system of one-dimensional subwavelength resonators equipped with two kinds of non-Hermiticity – an imaginary gauge potential and on-site gain and loss – we prove that all but two eigenmodes of the system pass through exceptional points and decouple. By tuning the gain-to-loss ratio, the system changes from a phase with unbroken parity-time symmetry to a phase with broken parity-time symmetry. At the macroscopic level, this is observed as a transition from symmetrical eigenmodes to condensated eigenmodes at one edge of the structure. Mathematically, it arises from a topological state change. The results of this paper open the door to the justification of a variety of phenomena arising from the interplay between non-Hermitian reciprocal and nonreciprocal mechanisms not only in subwavelength wave physics but also in quantum mechanics, where the tight-binding model coupled with the nearest neighbour approximation can be analysed with the same tools as those developed here.

Normal matrices, or matrices which commute with their adjoints, are of fundamental importance in pure and applied mathematics. In this paper, we study a natural functional on the space of square complex matrices whose global minimizers are normal matrices. We show that this functional, which we refer to as the non-normal energy, has incredibly well-behaved gradient descent dynamics: despite it being nonconvex, we show that the only critical points of the non-normal energy are the normal matrices, and that its gradient descent trajectories fix matrix spectra and preserve the subset of real matrices. We also show that, even when restricted to the subset of unit Frobenius norm matrices, the gradient flow of the non-normal energy retains many of these useful properties. This is applied to prove that low-dimensional homotopy groups of spaces of unit norm normal matrices vanish; for example, we show that the space of $d \times d$ complex unit norm normal matrices is simply connected for all $d \geq 2$. Finally, we consider the related problem of balancing a weighted directed graph – that is, readjusting its edge weights so that the weighted in-degree and out-degree are the same at each node. We adapt the non-normal energy to define another natural functional whose global minima are balanced graphs and show that gradient descent of this functional always converges to a balanced graph, while preserving graph spectra and realness of the weights. Our results were inspired by concepts from symplectic geometry and Geometric Invariant Theory, but we mostly avoid invoking this machinery and our proofs are generally self-contained.

The partial transposition from quantum information theory provides a new source to distill the so-called asymptotic freeness without the assumption of classical independence between random matrices. Indeed, a recent paper [10] established asymptotic freeness between partial transposes in the bipartite situation. In this paper, we prove almost sure asymptotic freeness in the general multipartite situation and establish a central limit theorem for the partial transposes.

For any integers x and y, let $(x, y)$ and $[x, y]$ stand for the greatest common divisor and the least common multiple of x and y, respectively. Let $a,b$ and n be positive integers, and let $S=\{x_1, \ldots , x_n\}$ be a set of n distinct positive integers. We denote by $(S^a)$ and $[S^a]$ the $n\times n$ matrices having the ath power of $(x_i,x_j)$ and $[x_i,x_j]$, respectively, as the $(i,j)$-entry. Bourque and Ligh [‘On GCD and LCM matrices’, Linear Algebra Appl. 174 (1992), 65–74] showed that if S is factor closed (that is, S contains all positive divisors of any element of S), then the GCD matrix $(S)$ divides the LCM matrix $[S]$ (written as $(S)\mid [S]$) in the ring $M_n({\mathbb Z})$ of $n\times n$ matrices over the integers. Hong [‘Divisibility properties of power GCD matrices and power LCM matrices’, Linear Algebra Appl. 428 (2008), 1001–1008] proved that $(S^a)\mid (S^b)$, $(S^a)\mid [S^b]$ and $[S^a]\mid [S^b]$ in the ring $M_{n}({\mathbb Z})$ when $a\mid b$ and S is a divisor chain (namely, there is a permutation $\sigma $ of order n such that $x_{\sigma (1)}\mid \cdots \mid x_{\sigma (n)}$). In this paper, we show that if $a\mid b$ and S is factor closed, then $(S^a)\mid (S^b)$, $(S^a)\mid [S^b]$ and $[S^a]\mid [S^b]$ in the ring $M_{n}({\mathbb Z})$. The proof is algebraic and p-adic. Our result extends the Bourque–Ligh theorem. Finally, several interesting conjectures are proposed.

We generalize Baker–Bowler’s theory of matroids over tracts to orthogonal matroids, define orthogonal matroids with coefficients in tracts in terms of Wick functions, orthogonal signatures, circuit sets and orthogonal vector sets, and establish basic properties on functoriality, duality and minors. Our cryptomorphic definitions of orthogonal matroids over tracts provide proofs of several representation theorems for orthogonal matroids. In particular, we give a new proof that an orthogonal matroid is regular if and only if it is representable over ${\mathbb F}_2$ and ${\mathbb F}_3$, which was originally shown by Geelen [16], and we prove that an orthogonal matroid is representable over the sixth-root-of-unity partial field if and only if it is representable over ${\mathbb F}_3$ and ${\mathbb F}_4$.

We introduce a family of polynomials, which arise in three distinct ways: in the large N expansion of a matrix integral, as a weighted enumeration of factorizations of permutations, and via the topological recursion. More explicitly, we interpret the complex Grassmannian $\mathrm {Gr}(M,N)$ as the space of $N \times N$ idempotent Hermitian matrices of rank M and develop a Weingarten calculus to integrate products of matrix elements over it. In the regime of large N and fixed ratio $\frac {M}{N}$, such integrals have expansions whose coefficients count factorizations of permutations into monotone sequences of transpositions, with each sequence weighted by a monomial in $t = 1 - \frac {N}{M}$. This gives rise to the desired polynomials, which specialise to the monotone Hurwitz numbers when $t = 1$. These so-called deformed monotone Hurwitz numbers satisfy a cut-and-join recursion, a one-point recursion, and the topological recursion. Furthermore, we conjecture on the basis of overwhelming empirical evidence that the deformed monotone Hurwitz numbers are real-rooted polynomials whose roots satisfy remarkable interlacing phenomena. An outcome of our work is the viewpoint that the topological recursion can be used to “topologise” sequences of polynomials, and we claim that the resulting families of polynomials may possess interesting properties.

This paper investigates structural changes in the parameters of first-order autoregressive (AR) models by analyzing the edge eigenvalues of the precision matrices. Specifically, edge eigenvalues in the precision matrix are observed if and only if there is a structural change in the AR coefficients. We show that these edge eigenvalues correspond to the zeros of a determinantal equation. Additionally, we propose a consistent estimator for detecting outliers within the panel time series framework, supported by numerical experiments.

Restriction is a natural quasi-order on d-way tensors. We establish a remarkable aspect of this quasi-order in the case of tensors over a fixed finite field; namely, that it is a well-quasi-order: it admits no infinite antichains and no infinite strictly decreasing sequences. This result, reminiscent of the graph minor theorem, has important consequences for an arbitrary restriction-closed tensor property X. For instance, X admits a characterisation by finitely many forbidden restrictions and can be tested by looking at subtensors of a fixed size. Our proof involves an induction over polynomial generic representations, establishes a generalisation of the tensor restriction theorem to other such representations (e.g., homogeneous polynomials of a fixed degree), and also describes the coarse structure of any restriction-closed property.

An element of a group is called strongly reversible or strongly real if it can be expressed as a product of two involutions. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for an element of $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ to be a product of two involutions. In particular, we classify the strongly reversible conjugacy classes in $\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb{C})$.

We prove that the infinite half-spin representations are topologically Noetherian with respect to the infinite spin group. As a consequence, we obtain that half-spin varieties, which we introduce, are defined by the pullback of equations at a finite level. The main example for such varieties is the infinite isotropic Grassmannian in its spinor embedding, for which we explicitly determine its defining equations.

Let W be a group endowed with a finite set S of generators. A representation $(V,\rho )$ of W is called a reflection representation of $(W,S)$ if $\rho (s)$ is a (generalized) reflection on V for each generator $s \in S$. In this article, we prove that for any irreducible reflection representation V, all the exterior powers $\bigwedge ^d V$, $d = 0, 1, \dots , \dim V$, are irreducible W-modules, and they are non-isomorphic to each other. This extends a theorem of R. Steinberg which is stated for Euclidean reflection groups. Moreover, we prove that the exterior powers (except for the 0th and the highest power) of two non-isomorphic reflection representations always give non-isomorphic W-modules. This allows us to construct numerous pairwise non-isomorphic irreducible representations for such groups, especially for Coxeter groups.

Isoclinic subspaces have been studied for over a century. Quantum error correcting codes were recently shown to define a subclass of families of isoclinic subspaces. The Knill–Laflamme theorem is a seminal result in the theory of quantum error correction, a central topic in quantum information. We show there is a generalized version of the Knill–Laflamme result and conditions that applies to all families of isoclinic subspaces. In the case of quantum stabilizer codes, the expanded conditions are shown to capture logical operators. We apply the general conditions to give a new perspective on a classical subclass of isoclinic subspaces defined by the graphs of anti-commuting unitary operators. We show how the result applies to recently studied mutually unbiased quantum measurements (MUMs), and we give a new construction of such measurements motivated by the approach.

We compute the large size limit of the moment formula derived in [14] for the Hermitian Jacobi process at fixed time. Our computations rely on the polynomial division algorithm which allows to obtain cancellations similar to those obtained in [3, Lemma 3]. In particular, we identify the terms contributing to the limit and show they satisfy a double recurrence relation. We also determine explicitly some of them and revisit a special case relying on Carlitz summation identity for terminating $1$-balanced ${}_4F_3$ functions taken at unity.

For a continuous-time phase-type (PH) distribution, starting with its Laplace–Stieltjes transform, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for its minimal PH representation to have the same order as its algebraic degree. To facilitate finding this minimal representation, we transform this condition equivalently into a non-convex optimization problem, which can be effectively addressed using an alternating minimization algorithm. The algorithm convergence is also proved. Moreover, the method we develop for the continuous-time PH distributions can be used directly for the discrete-time PH distributions after establishing an equivalence between the minimal representation problems for continuous-time and discrete-time PH distributions.

We prove new statistical results about the distribution of the cokernel of a random integral matrix with a concentrated residue. Given a prime p and a positive integer n, consider a random $n \times n$ matrix $X_n$ over the ring $\mathbb{Z}_p$ of p-adic integers whose entries are independent. Previously, Wood showed that as long as each entry of $X_n$ is not too concentrated on a single residue modulo p, regardless of its distribution, the distribution of the cokernel $\mathrm{cok}(X_n)$ of $X_n$, up to isomorphism, weakly converges to the Cohen–Lenstra distribution, as $n \rightarrow \infty$. Here on the contrary, we consider the case when $X_n$ has a concentrated residue $A_n$ so that $X_n = A_n + pB_n$. When $B_n$ is a Haar-random $n \times n$ matrix over $\mathbb{Z}_p$, we explicitly compute the distribution of $\mathrm{cok}(P(X_n))$ for every fixed n and a non-constant monic polynomial $P(t) \in \mathbb{Z}_p[t]$. We deduce our result from an interesting equidistribution result for matrices over $\mathbb{Z}_p[t]/(P(t))$, which we prove by establishing a version of the Weierstrass preparation theorem for the noncommutative ring $\mathrm{M}_n(\mathbb{Z}_p)$ of $n \times n$ matrices over $\mathbb{Z}_p$. We also show through cases the subtlety of the “universality” behavior when $B_n$ is not Haar-random.

We investigate when the algebraic numerical range is a C-spectral set in a Banach algebra. While providing several counterexamples based on classical ideas as well as combinatorial Banach spaces, we discuss positive results for matrix algebras and provide an absolute constant in the case of complex $2\times 2$-matrices with the induced $1$-norm. Furthermore, we discuss positive results for infinite-dimensional Banach algebras, including the Calkin algebra.

Let Γ be a finite graph and let $A(\Gamma)$ be the corresponding right-angled Artin group. From an arbitrary basis $\mathcal B$ of $H^1(A(\Gamma),\mathbb F)$ over an arbitrary field, we construct a natural graph $\Gamma_{\mathcal B}$ from the cup product, called the cohomology basis graph. We show that $\Gamma_{\mathcal B}$ always contains Γ as a subgraph. This provides an effective way to reconstruct the defining graph Γ from the cohomology of $A(\Gamma)$, to characterize the planarity of the defining graph from the algebra of $A(\Gamma)$ and to recover many other natural graph-theoretic invariants. We also investigate the behaviour of the cohomology basis graph under passage to elementary subminors and show that it is not well-behaved under edge contraction.

Let R be a ring and let $n\ge 2$. We discuss the question of whether every element in the matrix ring $M_n(R)$ is a product of (additive) commutators $[x,y]=xy-yx$, for $x,y\in M_n(R)$. An example showing that this does not always hold, even when R is commutative, is provided. If, however, R has Bass stable rank one, then under various additional conditions every element in $M_n(R)$ is a product of three commutators. Further, if R is a division ring with infinite center, then every element in $M_n(R)$ is a product of two commutators. If R is a field and $a\in M_n(R)$, then every element in $M_n(R)$ is a sum of elements of the form $[a,x][a,y]$ with $x,y\in M_n(R)$ if and only if the degree of the minimal polynomial of a is greater than $2$.

We obtain a system of identities relating boundary coefficients and spectral data for the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation with boundary conditions containing rational Herglotz–Nevanlinna functions of the eigenvalue parameter. These identities can be thought of as a kind of mini version of the Gelfand–Levitan integral equation for boundary coefficients only.