Ryota Inagaki ; Tanya Khovanova ; Austin Luo - Permutation-based Strategies for Labeled Chip-Firing on $k$-ary Trees

dmtcs:16108 - Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, January 9, 2026, vol. 28:2 - https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.16108
Permutation-based Strategies for Labeled Chip-Firing on $k$-ary TreesArticle

Authors: Ryota Inagaki ; Tanya Khovanova ; Austin Luo

    Chip-firing is a combinatorial game on a graph, in which chips are placed and dispersed among its vertices until a stable configuration is achieved. We specifically study a chip-firing variant on an infinite, rooted, directed $k$-ary tree where we place $k^n$ chips labeled $0,1,\dots, k^n-1$ on the root for some nonnegative integer $n$, and we say a vertex $v$ can fire if it has at least $k$ chips. When a vertex fires, we select $k$ labeled chips and send the $i$th smallest chip among them to its $i$th leftmost child. A stable configuration is reached when no vertex can fire. In this paper, we focus on stable configurations resulting from specific firing strategies based on permutations of $1, 2, \dots, n$. We then express the stable configuration as a permutation of $0,1, 2, \dots, k^n-1$ and explore its properties, such as the number of inversions and descents.

    20 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, v4: final version


    Volume: vol. 28:2
    Section: Combinatorics
    Published on: January 9, 2026
    Accepted on: December 19, 2025
    Submitted on: July 24, 2025
    Keywords: Combinatorics, 05C57, 05C63, 05A05, 05A15

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