Kevin Woods - The unreasonable ubiquitousness of quasi-polynomials

dmtcs:2335 - Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, January 1, 2013, DMTCS Proceedings vol. AS, 25th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC 2013) - https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.2335
The unreasonable ubiquitousness of quasi-polynomialsArticle

Authors: Kevin Woods 1

A function $g$, with domain the natural numbers, is a quasi-polynomial if there exists a period $m$ and polynomials $p_0,p_1,\ldots,p_m-1$ such that $g(t)=p_i(t)$ for $t\equiv i\bmod m$. Quasi-polynomials classically – and ``reasonably'' – appear in Ehrhart theory and in other contexts where one examines a family of polyhedra, parametrized by a variable t, and defined by linear inequalities of the form $a_1x_1+⋯+a_dx_d≤ b(t)$. Recent results of Chen, Li, Sam; Calegari, Walker; and Roune, Woods show a quasi-polynomial structure in several problems where the $a_i$ are also allowed to vary with $t$. We discuss these ``unreasonable'' results and conjecture a general class of sets that exhibit various (eventual) quasi-polynomial behaviors: sets $S_t$ that are defined with quantifiers $(\forall , ∃)$, boolean operations (and, or, not), and statements of the form $a_1(t)x_1+⋯+a_d(t)x_d ≤ b(t)$, where $a_i(t)$ and $b(t)$ are polynomials in $t$. These sets are a generalization of sets defined in the Presburger arithmetic. We prove several relationships between our conjectures, and we prove several special cases of the conjectures.


Volume: DMTCS Proceedings vol. AS, 25th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC 2013)
Section: Proceedings
Published on: January 1, 2013
Imported on: November 21, 2016
Keywords: Quasi-polynomials,Ehrhart theory,Presburger arithmetic,rational generating functions,[INFO.INFO-DM] Computer Science [cs]/Discrete Mathematics [cs.DM]

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