Publications

Export 37 results:
Sort by: Author Title Type [ Year  (Desc)]
Submitted
Cain, Alan J., Ricardo P. Guilherme, and António Malheiro. "Quasi-crystals for arbitrary root systems and associated generalizations of the hypoplactic monoid." (Submitted). AbstractWebsite

n/a

In Press
Alan J. Cain, António Malheiro, Duarte Ribeiro. "Identities and bases in the sylvester and Baxter monoids." Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics (In Press).
2022
Can, M.B., Casimiro Malheiro A. & A. "Idempotent Varieties of Incidence Monoids and Bipartite Posets." Algebra and Representation Theory (2022). AbstractWebsite

The algebraic variety defined by the idempotents of an incidence monoid is investigated. Its irreducible components are determined. The intersection with an antichain submonoid is shown to be the union of these irreducible components. The antichain monoids of bipartite posets are shown to be orthodox semigroups. The Green’s relations are explicitly determined, and applications to conjugacy problems are described. In particular, it is shown that two elements in the antichain monoid are primarily conjugate in the monoid if and only if they belong to the same -class and their multiplication by an idempotent of the same -class gives conjugate elements in the group.

A. J. Cain, M. Johnson, Kambites Malheiro M. A. "Representations and identities of plactic-like monoids." Journal of Algebra. 606 (2022): 819-850. AbstractWebsite

We exhibit faithful representations of the hypoplactic, stalactic, taiga, sylvester, Baxter and right patience sorting monoids of each finite rank as monoids of upper triangular matrices over any semiring from a large class including the tropical semiring and fields of characteristic 0. By analysing the image of these representations, we show that the variety generated by a single hypoplactic (respectively, stalactic or taiga) monoid of rank at least 2 coincides with the variety generated by the natural numbers together with a fixed finite monoid (respectively, F) and forms a proper subvariety of the variety generated by the plactic monoid of rank 2.

Cain, Alan J., António Malheiro, and Duarte Ribeiro. "Identities and bases in the hypoplactic monoid." Communications in Algebra. 50 (2022): 146-162. AbstractWebsite
n/a
2019
Cain, A. J., and A. Malheiro. "Combinatorics of cyclic shifts in plactic, hypoplactic, sylvester, Baxter, and related monoids." Journal of Algebra. 535 (2019): 159-224. Abstract

The cyclic shift graph of a monoid is the graph whose vertices are elements of the monoid and whose edges link elements that differ by a cyclic shift. This paper examines the cyclic shift graphs of `plactic-like' monoids, whose elements can be viewed as combinatorial objects of some type: aside from the plactic monoid itself (the monoid of Young tableaux), examples include the hypoplactic monoid (quasi-ribbon tableaux), the sylvester monoid (binary search trees), the stalactic monoid (stalactic tableaux), the taiga monoid (binary search trees with multiplicities), and the Baxter monoid (pairs of twin binary search trees). It was already known that for many of these monoids, connected components of the cyclic shift graph consist of elements that have the same
evaluation (that is, contain the same number of each generating symbol). This paper focusses on the maximum diameter of a connected component of the cyclic shift graph of these monoids in the rank-$n$ case. For the hypoplactic monoid, this is $n-1$; for the sylvester and taiga monoids, at least $n-1$ and at most $n$; for the stalactic monoid, $3$ (except for ranks $1$ and $2$, when it is respectively $0$ and $1$); for the plactic monoid, at least $n-1$ and at most $2n-3$. The current state of knowledge, including new and previously-known results, is summarized in a table.

Cain, Alan J., António Malheiro, and Fábio M. Silva. "Combinatorics of patience sorting monoids." Discrete Mathematics. 342.9 (2019): 2590-2611. AbstractWebsite

This paper makes a combinatorial study of the two monoids and the two types of tableaux that arise from the two possible generalizations of the Patience Sorting algorithm from permutations (or standard words) to words. For both types of tableaux, we present Robinson--Schensted--Knuth-type correspondences (that is, bijective correspondences between word arrays and certain pairs of semistandard tableaux of the same shape), generalizing two known correspondences: a bijective correspondence between standard words and certain pairs of standard tableaux, and an injective correspondence between words and pairs of tableaux.

We also exhibit formulas to count both the number of each type of tableaux with given evaluations (that is, containing a given number of each symbol). Observing that for any natural number $n$, the $n$-th Bell number is given by the number of standard tableaux containing $n$ symbols, we restrict the previous formulas to standard words and extract a formula for the Bell numbers. Finally, we present a `hook length formula' that gives the number of standard tableaux of a given shape and deduce some consequences.

Cain, A. J., R. D. Gray, and A. Malheiro. "Crystal monoids & crystal bases: Rewriting systems and biautomatic structures for plactic monoids of types An, Bn, Cn, Dn, and G2." Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. 162 (2019): 406-466. AbstractWebsite

This paper constructs presentations via finite complete rewriting systems for plactic monoids of types $A_n$, $B_n$, $C_n$, $D_n$, and $G_2$, using a unified proof strategy that depends on Kashiwara's crystal bases and analogies of Young tableaux, and on Lecouvey's presentations for these monoids. As corollaries, we deduce that plactic monoids of these types have finite derivation type and satisfy the homological finiteness properties left and right $\mathrm{FP}_\infty$. These rewriting systems are then applied to show that plactic monoids of these types are biautomatic.

Malheiro, António, and José Francisco Reis. "Identification of proofs via syzygies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 377.2140 (2019). AbstractWebsite

In 1900, Hilbert gave a lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris, for which he prepared 23 problems that mathematicians should solve during the twentieth century. It was found that there was a note on a 24th Problem focusing on the problem of simplicity of proofs. One of the lines of research that was generated from this problem was the identification of proofs. In this article, we present a possible method for exploring the identification of proofs based on the membership problem original from the theory of polynomial rings. To show this, we start by giving a complete worked-out example of a membership problem, that is, the problem of checking if a given polynomial belongs to an ideal generated by finitely many polynomials. This problem can be solved by considering Gröbner bases and the corresponding reductions. Each reduction is a simplification of the polynomial and it corresponds to a rewriting step. In proving that a polynomial is a member of an ideal, a rewriting process is used, and many different such processes can be considered. To better illustrate this, we consider a graph where each rewriting step corresponds to an edge, and thus a path corresponds to a rewriting process. In this paper, we consider the identification of paths, within the context of the membership problem, to propose a criterion of identification of proofs.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The notion of ‘simple proof’ - Hilbert’s 24th problem’.

Cain, A. J., A. Malheiro, and F. M. Silva. "The monoids of the patience sorting algorithm." International Journal of Algebra and Computation. 29.01 (2019): 85-125. AbstractWebsite

The left patience sorting (lPS) monoid, also known in the literature as the Bell monoid, and the right patient sorting (rPS) monoid are introduced by defining certain congruences on words. Such congruences are constructed using insertion algorithms based on the concept of decreasing subsequences.
Presentations for these monoids are given.

Each finite-rank rPS monoid is shown to have polynomial growth and to satisfy a non-trivial identity (dependent on its rank), while the infinite rank rPS monoid does not satisfy a non-trivial identity. The lPS monoids of finite rank have exponential growth and thus do not satisfy non-trivial identities. The
complexity of the insertion algorithms is discussed.

rPS monoids of finite rank are shown to be automatic and to have recursive complete presentations. When the rank is $1$ or $2$, they are also biautomatic. lPS monoids of finite rank are shown to have finite complete presentations and to be biautomatic.

2018
Cain, A. J., António Malheiro, and Fábio M. Silva Conjugacy in Patience Sorting monoids., 2018. Abstract

The cyclic shift graph of a monoid is the graph whose vertices are the elements of the monoid and whose edges connect elements that are cyclic shift related. The Patience Sorting algorithm admits two generalizations to words, from which two kinds of monoids arise, the $\belr$ monoid and the $\bell$ (also known as Bell) monoid. Like other monoids arising from combinatorial objects such as the plactic and the sylvester, the connected components of the cyclic shift graph of the $\belr$ monoid consists of elements that have the same number of each of its composing symbols. In this paper, with the aid of the computational tool SageMath, we study the diameter of the connected components from the cyclic shift graph of the $\belr$ monoid.

Within the theory of monoids, the cyclic shift relation, among other relations, generalizes the relation of conjugacy for groups. We examine several of these relations for both the $\belr$ and the $\bell$ monoids.

Cain, Alan J., and António Malheiro. "Crystals and trees: Quasi-Kashiwara operators, monoids of binary trees, and Robinson–Schensted-type correspondences." Journal of Algebra. 502 (2018): 347-381. AbstractWebsite

Kashiwara's crystal graphs have a natural monoid structure that arises by identifying words labelling vertices that appear in the same position of isomorphic components. The celebrated plactic monoid (the monoid of Young tableaux), arises in this way from the crystal graph for the q-analogue of the general linear Lie algebra gln, and the so-called Kashiwara operators interact beautifully with the combinatorics of Young tableaux and with the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence. The authors previously constructed an analogous ‘quasi-crystal’ structure for the related hypoplactic monoid (the monoid of quasi-ribbon tableaux), which has similarly neat combinatorial properties. This paper constructs an analogous ‘crystal-type’ structure for the sylvester and Baxter monoids (the monoids of binary search trees and pairs of twin binary search trees, respectively). Both monoids are shown to arise from this structure just as the plactic monoid does from the usual crystal graph. The interaction of the structure with the sylvester and Baxter versions of the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence is studied. The structure is then applied to prove results on the number of factorizations of elements of these monoids, and to prove that both monoids satisfy non-trivial identities.

Araújo, J., M. Kinyon, J. Konieczny, and A. Malheiro. "Decidability and Independence of Conjugacy Problems in Finitely Presented Monoids." Theoretical Computer Science. 731 (2018): 88-98. AbstractWebsite

There have been several attempts to extend the notion of conjugacy from groups to monoids.
The aim of this paper is study the decidability and independence of conjugacy problems
for three of these notions (which we will denote by $\sim_p$, $\sim_o$, and $\sim_c$) in
certain classes of finitely presented monoids. We will show that in the class of polycyclic monoids,
$p$-conjugacy is ``almost'' transitive, $\sim_c$ is strictly included in $\sim_p$, and
the $p$- and $c$-conjugacy problems are decidable with linear compexity.
For other classes of monoids, the situation is more complicated.
We show that there exists a monoid $M$ defined by a finite complete
presentation such that the $c$-conjugacy problem for $M$ is undecidable, and
that for finitely presented monoids, the $c$-conjugacy problem and the word
problem are independent, as are the $c$-conjugacy and $p$-conjugacy problems.

Cain, A. J., and A. Malheiro. "Identities in plactic, hypoplactic, sylvester, Baxter, and related monoids." The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics. 25.3 (2018): P3.30 (19 pages). AbstractWebsite

This paper considers whether non-trivial identities are satisfied by certain ‘plactic-like’ monoids that, like the plactic monoid, are closely connected with combinatorics. New results show that the hypoplactic, sylvester, Baxter, stalactic, and taiga monoids satisfy identities. The existing state of knowledge is discussed for the plactic and Bell monoids.

2017
Cain, Alan J., and António Malheiro. "Combinatorics of Cyclic Shifts in Plactic, Hypoplactic, Sylvester, and Related Monoids." Combinatorics on Words: 11th International Conference, WORDS 2017, Montréal, QC, Canada, September 11-15, 2017, Proceedings. Eds. Srečko Brlek, Francesco Dolce, Christophe Reutenauer, and Élise Vandomme. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017. 190-202. Abstract

The cyclic shift graph of a monoid is the graph whose vertices are elements of the monoid and whose edges link elements that differ by a cyclic shift. For certain monoids connected with combinatorics, such as the plactic monoid (the monoid of Young tableaux) and the sylvester monoid (the monoid of binary search trees), connected components consist of elements that have the same evaluation (that is, contain the same number of each generating symbol). This paper discusses new results on the diameters of connected components of the cyclic shift graphs of the finite-rank analogues of these monoids, showing that the maximum diameter of a connected component is dependent only on the rank. The proof techniques are explained in the case of the sylvester monoid.

Cain, A. J., and A. Malheiro. "Crystallizing the hypoplactic monoid: from quasi-Kashiwara operators to the Robinson--Schensted-type correspondence for quasi-ribbon tableaux." Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics. 45.2 (2017): 475-524. AbstractWebsite

Crystal graphs, in the sense of Kashiwara, carry a natural monoid structure given by identifying words labelling vertices that appear in the same position of isomorphic components of the crystal. In the particular case of the crystal graph for the q-analogue of the special linear Lie algebra sln, this monoid is the celebrated plactic monoid, whose elements can be identified with Young tableaux. The crystal graph and the so-called Kashiwara operators interact beautifully with the combinatorics of Young tableaux and with the Robinson--Schensted correspondence and so provide powerful combinatorial tools to work with them. This paper constructs an analogous `quasi-crystal' structure for the hypoplactic monoid, whose elements can be identified with quasi-ribbon tableaux and whose connection with the theory of quasi-symmetric functions echoes the connection of the plactic monoid with the theory of symmetric functions. This quasi-crystal structure and the associated quasi-Kashiwara operators are shown to interact just as neatly with the combinatorics of quasi-ribbon tableaux and with the hypoplactic version of the Robinson--Schensted correspondence. A study is then made of the interaction of the crystal graph of the plactic monoid and the quasi-crystal graph for the hypoplactic monoid. Finally, the quasi-crystal structure is applied to prove some new results about the hypoplactic monoid.

Araújo, João, Michael Kinyon, Janusz Konieczny, and António Malheiro. "Four notions of conjugacy for abstract semigroups." Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Section A Mathematics. 147 (2017): 1169-1214. AbstractWebsite

n/a

Cain, A. J., G. Klein, Ł. Kubat, A. Malheiro, and J. Okniński A note on identities in plactic monoids and monoids of upper-triangular tropical matrices. ArXiv e-prints., 2017. Abstract

This paper uses the combinatorics of Young tableaux to prove the plactic monoid of infinite rank does not satisfy a non-trivial identity, by showing that the plactic monoid of rank n cannot satisfy a non-trivial identity of length less than or equal to n. A new identity is then proven to hold for the monoid of n×n upper-triangular tropical matrices. Finally, a straightforward embedding is exhibited of the plactic monoid of rank 3 into the direct product of two copies of the monoid of 3×3 upper-triangular tropical matrices, giving a new proof that the plactic monoid of rank 3 satisfies a non-trivial identity.

Cain, A. J., R. D. Gray, and A. Malheiro. "On finite complete rewriting systems, finite derivation type, and automaticity for homogeneous monoids." Information and Computation. 255 (2017): 68-93. AbstractWebsite

The class of finitely presented monoids defined by homogeneous (length-preserving) relations
is considered. The properties of admitting a finite complete rewriting system, having finite derivation type, being automatic, and being biautomatic, are investigated for monoids in this class. The first main result shows that for any possible combination of these properties and their negations there is a homoegenous monoid with exactly this combination of properties. We then extend this result to show that the same statement holds even if one restricts attention to the class of $n$-ary multihomogeneous monoids (meaning every side of every relation has fixed length $n$, and all relations are also content preserving).

2015
Cain, A. J., and A. Malheiro. "Deciding conjugacy in sylvester monoids and other homogeneous monoids." Int. J. Algebra Comput.. 25 (2015): 899-915. AbstractWebsite

We give a combinatorial characterization of conjugacy in the sylvester monoid, showing that conjugacy is decidable for this monoid. We then prove that conjugacy is undecidable in general for homogeneous monoids and even for multihomogeneous monoids.

Cain, A. J., R. D. Gray, and A. Malheiro. "Finite Gröbner-Shirshov bases for plactic algebras and biautomatic structures for plactic monoids." J. Algebra. 423 (2015): 37-53. AbstractWebsite

This paper shows that every Plactic algebra of finite rank admits a finite Gröbner--Shirshov basis. The result is proved by using the combinatorial properties of Young tableaux to construct a finite complete rewriting system for the corresponding Plactic monoid, which also yields the corollaries that Plactic monoids of finite rank have finite derivation type and satisfy the homological finiteness properties left and right $\mathrm{FP}_\infty$. Also, answering a question of Zelmanov, we apply this rewriting system and other techniques to show that Plactic monoids of finite rank are biautomatic.

Cain, A. J., R. D. Gray, and A. Malheiro. "Rewriting systems and biautomatic structures for Chinese, hypoplactic, and sylvester monoids." Int. J. Algebra Comput.. 25 (2015): 51-80. AbstractWebsite

This paper studies complete rewriting systems and biautomaticity for three interesting classes of finite-rank homogeneous monoids: Chinese monoids, hypoplactic monoids, and sylvester monoids. For Chinese monoids, we first give new presentations via finite complete rewriting systems, using more lucid constructions and proofs than those given independently by Chen & Qui and Güzel Karpuz; we then construct biautomatic structures. For hypoplactic monoids, we construct finite complete rewriting systems and biautomatic structures. For sylvester monoids, which are not finitely presented, we prove that the standard presentation is an infinite complete rewriting system, and construct biautomatic structures. Consequently, the monoid algebras corresponding to monoids of these classes are automaton algebras in the sense of Ufnarovskij.

2014
Araújo, J., J. Konieczny, and A. Malheiro. "Conjugation in semigroups." J. Algebra. 403 (2014): 93-134. AbstractWebsite

The action of any group on itself by conjugation and the corresponding conjugacy relation play an important role in group theory. There have been several attempts to extend the notion of conjugacy to semigroups. In this paper, we present a new definition of conjugacy that can be applied to an arbitrary semigroup and it does not reduce to the universal relation in semigroups with a zero. We compare the new notion of conjugacy with existing definitions, characterize the conjugacy in various semigroups of transformations on a set, and count the number of conjugacy classes in these semigroups when the set is infinite.

Gray, R. D., and A. Malheiro. "Homotopy bases and finite derivation type for subgroups of monoids." J. Algebra. 410 (2014): 53-84. AbstractWebsite

Given a monoid defined by a presentation, and a homotopy base for the derivation graph associated to the presentation, and given an arbitrary subgroup of the monoid, we give a homotopy base (and presentation) for the subgroup. If the monoid has finite derivation type (FDT), and if under the action of the monoid on its subsets by right multiplication the strong orbit of the subgroup is finite, then we obtain a finite homotopy base for the subgroup, and hence the subgroup has FDT. As an application we prove that a regular monoid with finitely many left and right ideals has FDT if and only if all of its maximal subgroups have FDT. We use this to show that a finitely presented regular monoid with finitely many left and right ideals satisfies the homological finiteness condition FP3 if all of its maximal subgroups satisfy the condition FP_3.

2013
Araújo, J., M. Kinyon, and A. Malheiro. "A characterization of adequate semigroups by forbidden subsemigroups." Proc. R. Soc. Edinb., Sect. A, Math.. 143 (2013): 1115-1122. AbstractWebsite

A semigroup is amiable if there is exactly one idempotent in each ℛ*-class and in each ℒ*-class. A semigroup is adequate if it is amiable and if its idempotents commute. We characterize adequate semigroups by showing that they are precisely those amiable semigroups that do not contain isomorphic copies of two particular non-adequate semigroups as subsemigroups.