Papers

Majorization inequalities for symmetric polynomials have interested mathematicians for centuries, from the AM-GM inequality for two variables going back at least to Baudhāyana's Śulbasūtra and Euclid's Elements in the first millenium BCE, through classical results of Newton, Muirhead and Gantmacher, to more recent extensions to Schur polynomials and zonal spherical functions. These have been established case by case, with no unified approach. Although it is known that majorization inequalities follow from symmetry and convexity in the indexing partition, the difficulty of proving convexity in specific cases has left a number of outstanding conjectures inaccessible until now. The key insight of this paper is that log-convexity provides a more versatile tool and a unifying principle. It implies convexity and hence majorization, and it is preserved under multiplication and weighted averaging, making it well suited to inductive arguments in a wide range of settings. Using this idea, we prove new majorization inequalities for Macdonald polynomials, Jack polynomials and Heckman-Opdam hypergeometric functions, unifying existing results and resolving several open conjectures.

We introduce expander evolution algebras (EEAs), a class of nonassociative algebras defined over an arbitrary field $\K$ in which the underlying undirected loopless graph of the algebra – in the sense of Kowalski – is an expander graph in the classical sense of Cheeger. Starting from the formal graph definition of Kowalski and the algebraic framework of Tian, we establish a dictionary between combinatorial expansion and algebraic structure: the Cheeger constant of the associated graph governs connectivity, the subalgebra lattice, the growth of the evolution sequence, and – over $\R$ and $\C$ – the spectral gap of the evolution operator. Over a general field $\K$ we prove that EEAs are always connected and simple (as evolution algebras), carry no proper large evolution subalgebras, and that every generator of a symmetric EEA is algebraically persistent. Over $\C$ we obtain the sharp Alon–Boppana lower bound for the second eigenvalue of the evolution operator, leading to the definition of Ramanujan evolution algebras as optimal expanders. We also construct families of EEAs from Cayley graphs of finite groups. We close with open problems.

A family of subsets of a $t$-set is a \emph{$d$-cover-free family} or $d$-CFF if no subset in the family is contained in the union of any $d$ other subsets. Let $t(d, n)$ denote the minimum $t$ for which there exists a $d$-CFF on a $t$-set with $n$ subsets. Since a $1$-CFF is the same as a Sperner family, using Sperner's theorem, we get $t(1, n) \sim \log_{2}(n)$ as $n$ grows. Erdös, Frankl, and Füredi (JCTA, 1982) proved that $3.106\log_{2}(n) < t(2,n) < 5.512\log_{2}(n)$. This paper focuses on generalizing $1$-CFF and $2$-CFF using a graph $G$ where vertices correspond to subsets in the set system. A $G$-Sperner$(t, n)$ is a family of subsets of a $t$-set such that each edge of $G$ specifies a pair of subsets not contained in each other, where as a $G$-CFF$(t, n)$ is a family of subsets of a $t$-set such that it is $G$-Sperner and the union of a pair of subsets corresponding to each edge of $G$ does not contain any other subset in the family. Let $t_s(G)$ and $t(G)$ denote the minimum $t$ for which there exist a $G$-Sperner$(t, n)$ and a $G$-CFF$(t, n)$, respectively. In this way, $t_s(K_n) = t(1, n)$ and $t(K_n) = t(2, n)$. Firstly, we prove $t_s(G) = t(1, \chi(G))$ for any simple graph $G$ and provide various upper and lower bounds for $t(G)$. The trivial bound, $t(1, n) \leq t(G) \leq t(2, n)$ holds for any simple graph $G$ with no isolated vertex, with the lower bound tight for an infinite family of star graphs and the upper bound tight for complete graphs. We study when these bounds can be improved and give better constructive upper bounds for families of graphs such as stars, paths, cycles, wheels, and windmill graphs. In particular, a construction based on mixed-radix Gray codes yields $\log_{2}(n) \leq t(P_n) \leq t(C_n) \leq 1.893\log_{2}(n) + \mathcal{O}(1)$ where $P_n$ and $C_n$ are paths and cycles with $n$ vertices.

A subperiodic group is a group of motions of $d$-dimensional Euclidean space $\R^d$ which contains a translation lattice $\Z^r$ of rank $r < d$ as a subgroup of finite index. A classification into abstract group isomorphism classes is performed for subperiodic groups in dimension~3: 75 crystallographic rod groups ($r=1$) and 80 layer groups ($r=2$) are shown to belong to 32 and 34 isomorphism classes, respectively. An easy-to-compute set of invariants is developed for recognizing these isomorphism classes from finite presentations which makes use only of the number of subgroups up to a given finite index~$n$ ($n \leq 12$ for rod groups and $n \leq 8$ for layer groups) and how many of them are normal. Cayley graphs of rod and layer groups are used to illustrate the concept of bounded automorphisms of finite order, i.e. those when the distance between a graph vertex and its image has an upper bound. It is proven that a Cayley graph of a crystallographic space group $G$ (in which case $r=d$) possesses bounded automorphisms of finite order, if and only if the respective inverse-closed generating set is stabilized by conjugation by an element of finite order in $G$. As an application, subperiodic groups in $\R^4$ with a three-dimensional translation lattice are used to systematically derive embeddings of three-periodic ladder graphs in~$\R^3$.

We relativise the Thomassen–Woess definition of accessibility in graphs, defining what it means for a graph to be accessible relative to a peripheral system. In the case of locally finite, quasi-transitive graphs, we characterise relative accessibility in terms of a certain subring of the Boolean ring of the graph, and apply this to show that our definition agrees with the usual algebraic notion of relative accessibility in finitely generated groups. This implies, in particular, that relative accessibility is a quasi-isometry invariant amongst finitely generated groups, when the quasi-isometry coarsely preserves the left cosets of the peripheral subgroups. We also deduce a relative variant of Hamann's accessibility theorem on graphs with finitely generated cycle spaces.

We consider a model of 3d quantum gravity defined by $n$ copies of a rational Virasoro TQFT with central charge $1/2$, summed over all 3d topologies. This theory is holographically dual to an ensemble of all 2d CFTs with central charge $c=n/2$ and chiral algebra that includes $Vir_{1/2}^n$. We perform the sum over topologies and evaluate the partition function of the bulk theory. We then confirm the holographic duality by matching it to the boundary ensemble for small $n$. We proceed to consider the limit of a large central charge, in which the bulk theory simplifies and condenses to an Abelian phase. In this regime, the model manifests many features expected in semiclassical 3d quantum gravity. In particular, inclusion of all 3d topologies in the bulk sum cures the negativity of the density of states evaluated by the torus partition function. The model also exhibits a Hawking-Page transition, an exponentially suppressed wormhole amplitude, and provides a toy example of the holographic code. We discuss these aspects in detail and conclude with lessons for semiclassical quantum gravity.

It was recently proven that, in contrast to their matrix analogues, the moments of a real Gaussian tensor of size N do not in general factorize over their connected components in the asymptotic large N limit. While the original proof of this rather surprising result was not constructive, explicit examples of non-factorizing moments, which are expectation values of trace-invariants, have since then been discovered. We explore further aspects of this problem, with a focus on Haar-distributed (or Gaussian) complex random tensors, which are more directly relevant to quantum information. We start out by exhibiting an explicit example of non-factorizing trace-invariant, thereby filling a gap in the recent literature. We then turn to the opposite question: that of finding interesting families of trace-invariants that do in fact factorize at large N. We establish three main theorems in this regard. The first one provides a sufficient combinatorial bound ensuring large N factorization, that is also simple enough to be applicable to various cases of practical relevance. Our second main result shows that the expectation value of any compatible trace-invariant is dominated by certain tree-like combinatorial structures at large N, which we refer to as tree-like dominant pairings. Our third main theorem establishes that any trace-invariant admitting tree-like dominant pairings does actually factorize at large N. In this way, we are able to prove that various families of trace-invariants that have been previously studied in the literature do factorize at large N. We apply our findings to the theory of multipartite quantum entanglement: to any trace-invariant is associated a multipartite generalization of Rényi entanglement entropy, whose typical expectation value in the uniform random quantum state can be explicitly computed assuming large N factorization.

For minimally rigid graphs, the same edge-length data can admit multiple realizations (up to translations and rotations). Finding graphs with exceptionally many realizations is an extremal problem in rigidity theory, but exhaustive search quickly becomes infeasible due to the super-exponential growth of the number of candidate graphs and the high cost of realization-count evaluation. We propose a reinforcement-learning approach that constructs minimally rigid graphs via 0- and 1-extensions, also known as Henneberg moves. We optimize realization-count invariants using the Deep Cross-Entropy Method with a policy parameterized by a Graph Isomorphism Network encoder and a permutation-equivariant extension-level action head. Empirically, our method matches the known optima for planar realization counts and improves the best known bounds for spherical realization counts, yielding new record graphs.

This study is the $5^{th}$ part of a detailed study on Type-2 isomorphic circulant graphs having ten parts \cite{v2-1}-\cite{v2-10} and is a continuation of Part 4. Here, we study Type-2 isomorphic circulant graphs of $C_{48}(r_1,r_2,r_3)$, $C_{81}(r_1,r_2,r_3)$ and $C_{96}(r_1,r_2,r_3,r_4)$. We find that the total number of pairs of isomorphic circulant graphs of Type-2 w.r.t. $m$ = 2 of the forms $C_{n}(r_1,r_2,r_3)$ and $C_{n}(s_1,s_2,s_3)$ are 18 and 72 for $n$ = 48, 96, respectively and the total number of triples of isomorphic circulant graphs of Type-2 w.r.t. $m$ = 3 of the form $C_{81}(x_1,x_2,x_3)$, $C_{81}(y_1,y_2,y_3)$ and $C_{81}(z_1,z_2,z_3)$ are 27.

We give explicit recursive constructions for the polytope of all matroids $\Omega_{r,n}$ in ranks 2 and 3 for all ground set sizes. This polytope was introduced in recent work by Ferroni and Fink as a tool for checking positivity conjectures for valuative invariants. We supplement our theoretical construction by an implementation, which allows for the computation of $\Omega_{2,n}$ for $n\leq 33$ and $\Omega_{3,n}$ for $n\leq 10$. Further, we compute Schubert expansions for all isomorphism classes of matroids of rank $2$ up to $n = 80$, and for rank $3$ up to $n = 11$.

Ramsey numbers of monotone paths in ordered hypergraphs form a natural higher-uniformity extension of the classical Erdős–Szekeres theorems, and their tower height was determined by Moshkovitz and Shapira. A color-avoiding variant, initiated by Loh and further developed by Gowers and Long and by Mulrenin, Pohoata, and Zakharov, asks for monotone paths whose edges use only a bounded number of colors rather than a single color. For integers $q>p$, let $A_k(n;q,p)$ be the least integer $N$ such that every $q$-coloring of the ordered complete $k$-uniform hypergraph on $\{1,\ldots,N\}$ contains a monotone path of length $n$ whose edges use at most $p$ colors. We prove that, for every fixed $p$ and all sufficiently large $q$, the exact tower height of $A_k(n;q,p)$ is $\lceil (k-1)/p\rceil$. Thus the number of colors allowed on the path affects the Ramsey number at the level of tower height: allowing $p$ colors lowers the height from $k-1$ in the monochromatic problem to $\lceil (k-1)/p\rceil$. This answers questions of Mulrenin, Pohoata, and Zakharov. The upper bound follows from a simple block-compression argument. The main contribution is the matching lower bound, for which we develop a novel variant of the stepping-up method. A surprising feature of the proof is the appearance of the Morse–Hedlund theorem, a foundational result in symbolic dynamics and combinatorics on words. We establish and use a finite version of this theorem, which may be of independent interest.

We study the symmetric tensor rank of multiplication over finite field extensions using linearized polynomials. Via field trace, symmetric linearized polynomials are identified with symmetric bilinear forms and symmetric matrices, allowing symmetric tensor decompositions to be reformulated as spanning problems by rank-one symmetric linearized polynomials. We translate these spanning conditions into explicit linear systems over finite fields and use the Frobenius automorphism to obtain computationally effective criteria. As applications, we recover known values of the symmetric bilinear complexity for small extension degrees and obtain explicit symmetric decompositions for several parameters. We also introduce the symmetric tensor-rank of a symmetric rank-metric code and show that, for the natural one-dimensional Gabidulin code associated with finite field multiplication, this invariant coincides with the symmetric tensor rank of the multiplication map.

Let $fvs(G)$ denote the size of a minimum feedback vertex set of a digraph $G$. We study $fvs_g(n)$, which is the maximum $fvs(G)$ over all $n$-vertex planar digraphs $G$ of digirth $g$. We prove a planar-digraph analogue of the celebrated Lucchesi-Younger theorem showing that the minimum feedback vertex set is at most the maximum packing of a special type of directed cycles. As a corollary, we derive that $fvs_g(n)\le \frac{n-2}{g-2}$ for all $g\geq 3$. This improves all previously known upper bounds for $g \ge 4$, and for $g \ge 6$ it supersedes the best known upper bound of $\frac{2n-6}{g}$ (Esperet, Lemoine and Maffray, 2017) by a factor of 2. On the other hand, we develop a new framework to construct planar digraphs of fixed digirth and large $fvs$. Using it, for $g = 6$ and every $g \ge 8$, we construct an infinite family of planar digraphs of digirth $g$ and $fvs(G) = \frac{g+2}{g^2} n + O(1)$. For $g= 7$, our construction gives $fvs(G) = \frac{2}{11} n + O(1)$ and for $g = 4$ and $5$, $fvs(G) = \frac{n}{g-1}$. These improve the best known lower bound of $\frac{n-1}{g-1}$ (Knauer, Valicov and Wenger, 2017) for all $g \ge 4$. We thus obtain the two-sided bound $\frac{g+2}{g^2} \le \sup_{n \ge 1} \frac{fvs_g(n)}{n} \le \frac{1}{g-2}$ for all values $g = 6$ and every $g \ge 8$. The gap between the lower and the upper bound for $\sup_{n \ge 1} \frac{fvs_g(n)}{n}$ decreases from $\frac{g-2}{g(g-1)}$ to $\frac{4}{g^2(g-2)}$.

An outer-string representation of a graph $G$ is an intersection representation of $G$ where vertices are represented by curves (strings) inside the unit disk and each curve has exactly one endpoint on the boundary of the unit disk (the anchor of the curve). Additionally, if each two curves are allowed to cross at most once, we call this an \emph{outer-$1$-string representation} of $G$. If we impose a cyclic ordering on the vertices of $G$ and require the cyclic order of the anchors to respect this cyclic order, such a representation is called a constrained outer-string representation. In this paper, we present two results about graphs admitting outer-string representations. Firstly, we show that for a bipartite graph $G$ (and, more generally, for any $\{C_3,C_5\}$-free graph $G$) with a given cyclic order of vertices, we can decide in polynomial time whether $G$ admits a constrained outer-string representation. Our algorithm follows from a characterization by a single forbidden configuration, similar to that of Biedl et al. [GD 2024] for chordal graphs. Secondly, we answer an open question from the same authors and show that determining whether a given graph admits an outer-1-string representation is NP-hard. More generally, we show that it is NP-hard to determine if a given graph $G$ admits an outer-$k$-string representation for any fixed $k\ge1$.

The Erdős–Rado sunflower problem admits two natural analogues in finite vector spaces, corresponding to two different ways of generalising the set-theoretic notion of a sunflower. The first, used by Ihringer and Kupavskii [FFA 110 (2026) 102746], requires the petals to be in general position over the kernel; the second, used in the subspace codes literature (cf.\ Etzion–Raviv [DAM 186 (2015) 87-97], Blokhuis–De Boeck–D'haeseleer [DCC 90 (2022) 2101-2111]), requires only that the kernel equals the pairwise intersection of distinct petals. We refer to the second version as a set-like sunflower, following Blokhuis, De Boeck and D'haeseleer. In this note, we focus on the set-like setting. {We first observe by illustrations that general-position sunflower-freeness does not imply set-like sunflower-freeness.} We then present a construction of set-like $s$-sunflower-free families of $k$-spaces \revised{in $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ for $\lceil(n+1)/2\rceil \leq k \leq n-1$, of size $q^{n-k}$ (and $q^{n-k}+1$ for even $q$),} based on a manipulated version of the lifting construction; to our knowledge, this is the first systematic construction tailored to this setting. Finally, we compare the size of the construction with the exact optimum for small parameters, computed by exhaustive search.

Reeb spaces of continuous real-valued functions on topological spaces are fundamental and strong tools in investigating the spaces. The Reeb space is the natural quotient space of the space of the domain represented by connected components of its level sets. They have appeared in theory of Morse functions in the last century and as important topological objects, they are shown to be graphs for tame functions on (compact) manifolds such as Morse(-Bott) functions and naturally generalized ones. Related general theory develops actively, recently, mainly by Gelbukh and Saeki. For nice Haudorff spaces and continuous functions there, they are "$1$-dimensional". We concentrate on Reeb spaces which are not CW complexes and study their representations by graphs and nice examples. Reconstructing nice smooth functions with given Reeb graphs is of related studies and pioneered by Sharko and followed by Masumoto, Michalak, Saeki, and so on. The author has also contributed to it.

We introduce a Hamming-type angular function $$\mathrm{angle}_H(u,v):= \min_{c \in \mathbb{F}_q^n} d_H(u, cv)$$ on pairs of nonzero vectors in $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ and show that it satisfies all three metric axioms up to scalar multiplication. The function $\mathrm{angle}_H$ is invariant under nonzero scalar multiplication in either argument and therefore descends to a genuine integer-valued metric on the projective space $\mathbb{P}(\mathbb{F}_q^n)$. As a concrete application, we prove an angular (or projective) version of the unique-decoding theorem for linear codes: if $\mathrm{angle}_H(u, C\setminus\{0\}) < d/2$, where $d$ is the minimum distance of the linear code $C$, then the closest direction in $C$ to $u$ is unique up to nonzero scalar multiplication. We then discuss how this angular viewpoint relates to the proximity-gap programme for Reed–Solomon codes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to define an angle notion for vectors over finite fields and interpret it from several perspectives, including geometry, coding theory, and cryptography.

A square is a word of the form $uu$, where $u$ is a nonempty finite word. Given a finite word $w$ of length $n$, let $[w]$ denote the corresponding circular word, i.e., the set of all cyclic rotations of $w$. We study the number of distinct square factors of the elements of $[w]$. Amit and Gawrychowski first showed that this number is upper bounded by $3.14n$. In a recent article, Charalampopoulos et al. improved this upper bound to $1.8n$ and conjectured that the sharp upper bound is $1.5n$. In this note, we improve this upper bound to $\frac{5}{3}n$.

Perfect codes are arguably the most fascinating structures in combinatorial coding theory, and their classification and weight distribution are of considerable interest. This classification also involves the analysis of some related structures. This paper considers five closely related structures, but all of them have never been tied together before. These structures are 1-perfect codes, extended 1-perfect codes, nearly perfect 1-covering codes, extended nearly perfect 1-covering codes, and one family of completely regular codes (to be called diamond codes). The current work concentrates on the weight distributions of these five families of codes. In the past, some of these weight distributions were not computed, some required heavy tools, and for some only the weight enumerator was presented. We provide complete weight distributions for all five families using some methods that do not require any heavy tools.

A conflict-free cut $F$ on a simple connected graph $G = (V, E)$ is defined as a set of edges $F \subseteq E$ such that $G-F$ is disconnected, and no two edges in $F$ are conflicting. The notion of conflicting edges is represented using an associated conflict graph $\widehat{G} = (\widehat{V}, \widehat{E})$ where $\widehat{V} = E$. Deciding if a given planar graph $G$, with an associated conflict graph $\widehat{G}$, has a conflict-free cut is known to be NP-complete, when $G$ has maximum degree four and $\widehat{G}$ is a line graph of $G$ [Bonsma, JGT 2009]. In this paper, we prove the following for the case when $\widehat{G}$ is 1-regular. * We completely resolve the complexity of the decision problem when $G$ is planar. Towards this end, we show that (a) there always exists a conflict-free cut when the graph is planar and 4-regular unless it is the octahedron graph and (b) the decision problem is NP-complete, even in the case when $G$ is planar with maximum degree 5. * We also show that the decision problem is NP-complete when $G$ is a 3-degenerate graph with maximum degree 5. This completely resolves the complexity status of the problem when $G$ is 3-degenerate. * We construct families of graphs with 1-regular conflict graphs that do not have a conflict-free cut. Our results answer the questions posed in [Rauch, Rautenbach and Souza, IPL 2025].

Let $D=(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{B})$ be a symmetric $(v,k,\lambda)$-design and let $(X,Y)$ be an equinumerous incidence-free pair, with $X\subseteq \mathcal{P}$ and $Y\subseteq \mathcal{B}$. In this note, we give an elementary proof which shows the existence of a perfect matching between $\mathcal{P} \setminus X$ and $\mathcal{B}\setminus Y$ in the incidence graph of $D$. This recovers a result of Spiro, Adriaensen and Mattheus, who already showed this using different arguments for $k\geq 36$. We use this to connect some dots in the literature and prove that finding the chromatic number of the Kneser graph on chambers of a projective plane is equivalent to finding the incidence-free number of the incidence graph of the plane. Furthermore, we construct an incidence-free pair for PG$(2,q^2)$ of size roughly $q^3/2+3q^2/4$.

An $r$-uniform hypergraph is called $t$-union-free if any two distinct subsets of at most $t$ edges have distinct union. The study of union-free hypergraphs has multiple origins and a long history, dating back to the works of Kautz and Singleton (1964) in coding theory, Bollobás and Erdős (1976) in combinatorics, and Hwang and Sós (1987) in group testing. Let $U_t(n,r)$ denote the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $t$-union-free $r$-uniform hypergraph. In this paper, we determine the asymptotic behavior of $U_t(n,r)$, up to a lower order term, for almost all $t\ge 3$ and $r\ge 3$. This significantly advances the understanding of this extremal function, as previously, only the asymptotics of $U_2(n,3)$ and $U_2(n,4)$ were known. As a key ingredient of our proof, we establish the existence of near-optimal locally sparse induced hypergraph packings, which is of independent interest.

We present a study of cubic surfaces from the novel perspective of positive geometry. Our positive geometries have dimension two (the surface minus its 27 lines), dimension three (its complement in 3-space), and dimension four (the moduli space). In each case we explore the positive arrangement, its combinatorial rank, and the canonical forms.

Each self-similar dendrite K with a finite self-similar boundary defines a finite acyclic edge-labeled bipartite graph G, called the sprout of K. The paper shows that the sprout G determines the combinatorial properties of the dendrite K and its topological structure.

Hibi, Yoshida, and the author classified Gorenstein simplices which are not lattice pyramids and whose \(h^*\)-polynomials are of the form \(1+t^k+t^{2k}+\cdots+t^{(v-1)k}\) when \(v\) is a prime number or the product of two prime numbers. They also conjectured that, for general \(v\), the number of unimodular equivalence classes of such simplices depends only on the divisor lattice of \(v\). This paper proves the conjecture by giving a constructive classification of Gorenstein simplices whose \(h^*\)-polynomials are of this form. More precisely, their unimodular equivalence classes are shown to be parametrized by strict divisor chains in the divisor lattice of \(v\) together with certain recursive combinatorial data. As a consequence, an explicit formula for the number of equivalence classes in terms of the divisor lattice of \(v\) is obtained.

For any given vertices $u$ and $v$ in a graph, the hitting time of a random walk on a finite graph is the number of steps it takes for a random walk to reach vertex $v$ starting at vertex $u$. The expected value of the hitting time is the average hitting time. In this paper, we present an algebraic-combinatorial method for calculating the average hitting time between vertices of finite graphs exhibiting high regularity, along with its applications to multiple graph classes. Our approach exploits a novel connection between maximal-entropy random walks and weight-equitable partitions, providing a unifying framework that strengthens and extends several known results, including Rao's method [Statistics & Probability Letters, 2013] for computing the hitting time from a vertex to a neighbor under certain symmetries of the starting vertex.

In this article, we give a classification of irreducible completely splittable representations of affine Hecke-Clifford superalgebras $H_n^{\mathrm{aff}}(q)$ when $q^2$ is a primitive $h$-th root of unity. As an application, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the finite Hecke-Clifford superalgebra $H_n(q)$ to be semisimple. Specially we show that $H_n(q)$ is semisimple if and only $h >n$ in the case $h$ is odd and $h >2n$ in the case $h$ is even.

Let $f(d)$ be the smallest value for which every bridgeless graph $G$ with diameter $d$ admits a strong orientation $\overrightarrow{G}$ such that the diameter of $\overrightarrow{G}$ is at most $f(d)$. Chvátal and Thomassen (JCTB, 1978) established general bounds for $f(d)$, and also proved that $f(2)=6$ and $f(4)\geq 12$. The works of both Kwok, Liu and West (JCTB, 2010) and Wang and Chen (JCTB, 2022) together determined $f(3)=9$. In this paper, we improve the best known upper bound for $f(4)$ from $21$ (Babu et al., DAM, 2021) to \textbf{$18$}.

We study a noisy version of a min-max type zero-sum game on the $d$-ary tree. Each edge of the tree is assigned an i.i.d.\ cookie, distributed uniformly on $\{+1,-1\}$. The game is played as follows: starting at the root, two players alternate turns in choosing a child to move to, with the game ending after each player took $n$ turns. Both players have full knowledge of the cookies on the whole tree. The cookies along the traversed edges are picked up and placed in a shared cookie jar. The first player's payoff is the sum of the cookies in the cookie jar, while the second player pays that sum. The value $V_n$ of the $n$-round game is the largest signed sum which can be guaranteed by the first player. We analyze the value $V_n$ and show that as $n \to \infty$, the value is tight for $d=2$, converges in distribution for $d \ge 3$, and converges almost surely for $d \ge 15$. Along the way, we prove various tightness and double exponential tail decay results. The analysis is a mix of percolation-type arguments for large $d$, and iterations on distributions combined with interval arithmetic for small $d$. For $d=2$ we prove the existence of a continuum of fixed points for this iteration, highlighting surprising qualitative differences with the case $d \ge 3$. The question of convergence for $d=2$ remains open.

In this paper, we make use of the classification results of low-degree permutation rational functions together with their geometric properties to investigate rational functions that induce permutations on the multiplicative subgroup mu_q+1, where q is a prime power. By carefully analyzing the structural conditions under which such rational functions permute muq+1, we obtain an explicit description of a broad class of permutation rational functions of small degree. As a direct application of these findings, we explicitly determine many permutation quadrinomials over Fq2 that are induced by degree-3 rational functions permuting muq+1. Our approach not only unifies and extends several existing results in the literature but also provides a concrete geometric perspective for characterizing permutation polynomials over Fq2.