G.-Pechenik-Pfannerer-Striker-Swanson applied hourglass plabic graphs to construct web bases for spaces of tensor invariants of fundamental representations of $U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_4)$, extending Kuperberg's celebrated basis for $U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_3)$. We give several combinatorial characterizations of basis webs in the kernel of the projection to invariants in a tensor product of arbitrary (type $1$) irreducibles. We apply this to show that the nonzero images of basis webs form a basis (a property shared with Lusztig's dual canonical basis) yielding distinguished clasped web bases for each such tensor product.

In this article we will introduce a central problem in additive combinatorics, which arised from the famous van der Waerden theorem and an early conjecture of Erdős and Turán. The first important theorem was due to Roth in 1953. There were a number of generalized or improved results afterwards, which we call Roth-type theorems. We will list them and try to give concise expositions to the ideas in some of the proofs without much prior knowledge.

It is known that the Ehrhart polynomials of cross-polytopes, as well as of pyramids over them, have positive coefficients. We give a combinatorial proof of this fact by showing that a scaled version of the Ehrhart polynomials are generating functions for certain colored permutations. This answers a question posed by Stanley.

We classify all wormhole singularities, i.e. cyclic quotient surface singularities admitting at least two extremal P-resolutions, thereby solving an open problem posed by Urzúa. Our approach introduces a new combinatorial framework based on what we call the coherent graph of a framed triangulated polygon. As an application, we give an alternative proof of the Hacking-Tevelev-Urzúa theorem on the maximum number of extremal P-resolutions of a cyclic quotient singularity.

We consider domino tilings of the Aztec diamond. Using the Domino Shuffling algorithm introduced by Elkies, Kuperberg, Larsen, and Propp in arXiv:math/9201305, we are able to generate domino tilings uniformly at random. In this paper, we investigate the probability of finding a domino at a specific position in such a random tiling. We prove that this placement probability is always equal to $1/4$ plus a rational function, whose shape depends on the location of the domino, multiplied by a position-independent factor that involves only the size of the diamond. This result leads to significantly more compact explicit counting formulas compared to previous findings. As a direct application, we derive explicit counting formulas for the domino tilings of Aztec diamonds with $2\times 2$-square holes at arbitrary positions.

Billey-Postnikov (BP) decompositions govern when Schubert varieties $X(w)$ decompose as bundles of smaller Schubert varieties. We further develop the theory of BP decompositions and show that, in finite type, they can be recognized by pattern conditions and are indexed by the order ideals of a poset $\mathsf{bp}(w)$ that we introduce; we conjecture that this holds in any Coxeter group. We then apply BP decompositions to show that, when $X(w)$ is rationally smooth and $W$ simply laced, the Schubert structure constants $c_{uv}^w$ satisfy a triangularity property, yielding a canonical involution on the Schubert cells of $X(w)$ respecting Poincaré duality. We also classify the rationally smooth Bruhat intervals in finite type (other than $E$) which admit generalized Lehmer codes, answering questions and conjectures of Billey-Fan-Losonczy, Bolognini-Sentinelli, and Bishop-Milićević-Thomas. Finally, we show that rationally smooth Schubert varieties in infinite type need not have Grassmannian BP decompositions, disproving conjectures of Richmond-Slofstra and Oh-Richmond.

The \emph{chromatic number} of a hypergraph is the smallest number of colors needed to color the vertices such that no edge of at least two vertices is monochromatic. Given a family of geometric objects $\mathcal{F}$ that covers a subset $S$ of the Euclidean space, we can associate it with a hypergraph whose vertex set is $\mathcal F$ and whose edges are those subsets ${\mathcal{F}'}\subset \mathcal F$ for which there exists a point $p\in S$ such that ${\mathcal F}'$ consists of precisely those elements of $\mathcal{F}$ that contain $p$. The question whether $\mathcal F$ can be split into 2 coverings is equivalent to asking whether the chromatic number of the hypergraph is equal to 2. There are a number of competing notions of the chromatic number that lead to deep combinatorial questions already for abstract hypergraphs. In this paper, we concentrate on \emph{geometrically defined} (in short, \emph{geometric}) hypergraphs, and survey many recent coloring results related to them. In particular, we study and survey the following problem, dual to the above covering question. Given a set of points $S$ in the Euclidean space and a family $\mathcal{F}$ of geometric objects of a fixed type, define a hypergraph ${\mathcal H}_m$ on the point set $S$, whose edges are the subsets of $S$ that can be obtained as the intersection of $S$ with a member of $\mathcal F$ and have at least $m$ elements. Is it true that if $m$ is large enough, then the chromatic number of ${\mathcal H}_m$ is equal to 2?

Ricci curvature and its associated flow offer powerful geometric methods for analyzing complex networks. While existing research heavily focuses on applications for undirected graphs such as community detection and core extraction, there have been relatively less attention on directed graphs. In this paper, we introduce a definition of Ricci curvature and an accompanying curvature flow for directed graphs. Crucially, for strongly connected directed graphs, this flow admits a unique global solution. We then apply this flow to detect strongly connected subgraphs from weakly connected directed graphs. (A weakly connected graph is connected overall but not necessarily strongly connected). Unlike prior work requiring graphs to be strongly connected, our method loosens this requirement. We transform a weakly connected graph into a strongly connected one by adding edges with very large artificial weights. This modification does not compromise our core subgraph detection. Due to their extreme weight, these added edges are automatically discarded during the final iteration of the Ricci curvature flow. For core evaluation, our approach consistently surpasses traditional methods, achieving better results on at least two out of three key metrics. The implementation code is publicly available at this https URL.

The $k$-Markov numbers, introduced by Gyoda and Matsushita, are those which appear in positive integral solutions to $x^2 + y^2 + z^2 + k(xy + xz + yz) = (3+3k)xyz$. When $k =0$, this recovers the ordinary Markov numbers. A long-standing question in the theory of Markov numbers is Frobenius's unicity conjecture, concerning whether every Markov number is the maximum in a unique solution triple. Aigner gave a series of weaker, related conjectures which were confirmed to be true by Lee, Li, Rabideau, and Schiffler using techniques from the theory of cluster algebras. We show here that $k$-Markov numbers also satisfy Aigner's conjectures.

We consider the $q$-deformation of rational numbers introduced recently by Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko. We propose three enumerative interpretations of these $q$-rationals: in terms of a new version of Ostrowski's numeration system for integers, in terms of order ideals of fence posets and in terms of perfect matchings of snake graphs. Contrary to previous results which are restricted to rational numbers greater than one, our interpretations work for all positive rational numbers and are based on a single combinatorial object for defining both the numerator and denominator. The proofs rest on order-preserving bijections between posets over these objects. We recover a formula for a $q$-analog of Markoff numbers. We also deduce a fourth interpretation given in terms of the integer points inside a polytope in $\mathbb{R}^k$ on both sides of a hyperplane where $k$ is the length of the continued fraction expansion.

The concept of effective resistance, originally introduced in electrical circuit theory, has been extended to the setting of graphs by interpreting each edge as a resistor. In this context, the effective resistance between two vertices quantifies the total opposition to current flow when a unit current is injected at one vertex and extracted at the other. Beyond its physical interpretation, the effective resistance encodes rich structural and geometric information about the underlying graph: it defines a metric on the vertex set, relates to the topology of the graph through Foster's theorem, and determines the probability of an edge appearing in a random spanning tree. Generalizations of effective resistance to simplicial complexes have been proposed in several forms, often formulated as matrix products of standard operators associated with the complex. In this paper, we present a twofold generalization of the effective resistance. First, we introduce a novel, basis-independent bilinear form, derived from an algebraic reinterpretation of circuit theory, that extends the classical effective resistance from graphs. Second, we extend this bilinear form to simplices, chains, and cochains within simplicial complexes. This framework subsumes and unifies all existing matrix-based formulations of effective resistance. Moreover, we establish higher-order analogues of several fundamental properties known in the graph case: (i) we prove that effective resistance induces a pseudometric on the space of chains and a metric on the space of cycles, and (ii) we provide a generalization of Foster's Theorem to simplicial complexes.

Let $d\ge3$ and $\mathbb{F}_q^{d}$ be the $d$-dimensional vector space over a finite field of order $q$, where $q$ is a prime power. Fix a slice $\pi=\{x_d=\lambda\}$ of the unit sphere $S^{d-1}=\{x\colon ||x||=1\}$ and let $X_\pi$ be the set of lines through the origin meeting $\pi\cap S^{d-1}$. For $E\subset\mathbb{F}_q^{d}$ and $N\ge1$, we study the exceptional sets $$\mathcal{T}_1(X_\pi,E,N)=\bigl\{V\in X_\pi:\ |\pi_V(E)|\le N\bigr\},\qquad \mathcal{T}_2(X_\pi,E,N)=\bigl\{V\in X_\pi:\ |\pi_{V^\perp}(E)|\le N\bigr\},$$ on their respective natural ranges of $N$. Using discrete Fourier analysis together with restriction/extension estimates for cone and sphere type quadrics over finite fields, we obtain sharp bounds (up to constant factors) for $\lvert \mathcal{T}_1\rvert$ and $\lvert \mathcal{T}_2\rvert$, with separate treatment of the special slices $\lambda=\pm1$ and of the isotropic slice $\lambda=0$. The bounds exhibit arithmetic-geometric dichotomies absent in the full Grassmannian: the quadratic character of $\lambda^{2}-1$ and the parity of $d$ determine the size of the exceptional sets. As an application, when $|E|\ge q$, there exists a positive proportion of elements $\mathbf{y}\in X_\pi$ such that the pinned dot-product sets $\{\mathbf{y}\cdot \mathbf{x}\colon \mathbf{x}\in E\}$ are of cardinality $\Omega(q)$. We further treat analogous families arising from the spheres of radii $0$ and $-1$, and by combining these slices, recover the known estimates for projections over the full Grassmannian, complementing a result of Chen (2018).

Strongly robust toric ideals are the toric ideals for which the set of indispensable binomials is the Graver basis. The strongly robust simplicial complex $\Delta _T$ of a simple toric ideal $I_T$ determines the strongly robust property for all toric ideals that have $I_T$ as their bouquet ideal. We prove that \text{dim} \Delta_T<\text{rank}(T) for configurations in general position, partially answering a question posed by Sullivant.

The cocycle stability rate of a simplicial complex measures how far cochains with small coboundaries are from actual cocycles. In this paper, we study the 1-dimensional cocycle stability rate with permutation coefficients of random 2-dimensional Linial--Meshulam complexes. Our main contribution is the following: If, in the middle traingle density range, these random complexes asymptotically almost surely have a linear cocycle stability rate, then there exists a non-sofic hyperbolic group. As no non-sofic group, nor any non-residually finite hyperbolic group, are known to exist, this opens a potential approach to both problems simultaneously. Our proof method is inspired by a well known fact about the non local testability of Sipser--Spielman expander codes.