A linear algebra-free proof of the Matrix-Tree Theorem

As a new assistant professor at Colorado State University, I had the privilege this fall of teaching Math 501, the introductory graduate level course in combinatorics. We encountered many ‘mathematical gemstones’ in the course, and one of my favorites is the Matrix-Tree theorem, which gives a determinental formula for the number of spanning trees in a graph. In particular, there is a version for directed graphs that can be stated as follows.

On Raising Your Hand

A few weeks ago I attended the AWM (Association of Women in Mathematics) Research Symposium in Houston, TX. I gave a talk in my special session, speaking on queer supercrystals for the first time, to a room full of female mathematicians.

I was a bit disappointed when, at the end of my talk, no one raised their hand to ask any questions.  It’s usually the classic sign of an uninteresting or inappropriately aimed talk, so I figured that maybe I had to revisit my slides and make them more accessible for the next time I spoke on the subject.

Afterwards, however, several of the women in my session came up to me privately to ask specific questions about my research.  When I told my husband about this after the conference, he pointed out that perhaps they just were the kind of people to prefer asking questions one-on-one rather than raising their hands during or after the lecture.

“Did anyone in your session ask questions after the other talks?’’ he asked me, testing his theory.

Addicted to Crystal Math

Some of my recent research has centered on crystals, so here’s an introductory post, from a combinatorial point of view, on what crystals are and where they come up.

First, a clarification: the crystals I have in mind are not the chemical kind that you find in nature, nor are they any of these other uses of the word crystal on the Wikipedia disambiguation page. There is yet another use of the word, sometimes referred to as a crystal base, introduced by Kashiwara in the mid-90’s. Kashiwara developed crystal base theory as a way of understanding the $q\to 0$ limit of the representation theory of quantum groups $U_q(\mathfrak{g})$ where $\mathfrak{g}$ is a Lie algebra and $U_q(\mathfrak{g})$ is a $q$-analog of the universal enveloping algebra $U(\mathfrak{g})$. In the quantized statistical mechanics models in which quantum groups come up, the parameter $q$ is a measure of temperature, so the $q\to 0$ limit is exploring what happens in the situation of absolute zero temperature. Hence the word ``crystal’’, referring to what happens to many forms of matter when frozen.

Hockey sticks on planet ABBABA

Question: On the planet ABBABA, the inhabitants have a binary language where the only two letters in their alphabet are A and B. The language is incredibly efficient and complex in that every finite sequence of A’s and B’s is a valid word. How many of the words in this language have exactly five A’s and at most five B’s?

For instance, ABAAABA, AAAAA, and BBBBBAAAAA are all valid such words, since they all have five A’s and no more than five B’s.

The CW complex structure of the Grassmannian

In a previous post, we briefly described the complex Grassmannian $\mathrm{Gr}(n,k)$ as a CW complex whose cells are the Schubert cells with respect to a chosen flag. We’ll now take a closer look at the details of this construction, along the lines of the exposition in this master’s thesis of Tuomas Tajakka (chapter 3) or Hatcher’s book Vector Bundles and $K$-theory (page 31), but with the aid of concrete examples.

Background on CW complexes

Let’s first review the notion of a CW complex (or cell complex), as described in Hatcher’s Algebraic Topology.

An $n$-cell is any topological space homeomorphic to the open ball $B_n=\{v\in\mathbb{R}^n:|v|<1\}$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Similarly an $n$-disk is a copy of the closure $\overline{B_n}=\{v\in \mathbb{R}^n:|v|\le 1\}$.

To construct a cell complex, one starts with a set of points called the $0$-skeleton $X^0$, and then attaches $1$-disks $D$ via continuous boundary maps from the boundary $\partial D$ (which simply consists of two points) to $X^0$. The result is a $1$-skeleton $X^1$, which essentially looks like a graph: