Topics in Hyperplane Arrangements, Polytopes and Box-Splines brings together many areas of research that focus on methods to compute the number of integral points in suitable families or variable polytopes. The topics introduced expand upon differential and difference equations, approximation theory, cohomology, and module theory. This book, written by two distinguished authors, engages a broad audience by proving the a strong foudation. This book may be used in the classroom setting as well as a reference for researchers.

Topics in Hyperplane Arrangements, Polytopes and Box-Splines brings together many areas of research that focus on methods to compute the number of integral points in suitable families or variable polytopes. The topics introduced expand upon differential and difference equations, approximation theory, cohomology, and module theory. This book, written by two distinguished authors, engages a broad audience by proving the a strong foudation. This book may be used in the classroom setting as well as a reference for researchers.

This monograph studies the interplay between various algebraic, geometric and combinatorial aspects of real hyperplane arrangements. It provides a careful, organized and unified treatment of several recent developments in the field, and brings forth many new ideas and results. It has two parts, each divided into eight chapters, and five appendices with background material. Part I gives a detailed discussion on faces, flats, chambers, cones, gallery intervals, lunes and other geometric notions associated with arrangements. The Tits monoid plays a central role. Another important object is the category of lunes which generalizes the classical associative operad. Also discussed are the descent and lune identities, distance functions on chambers, and the combinatorics of the braid arrangement and related examples. Part II studies the structure and representation theory of the Tits algebra of an arrangement. It gives a detailed analysis of idempotents and Peirce decompositions, and connects them to the classical theory of Eulerian idempotents. It introduces the space of Lie elements of an arrangement which generalizes the classical Lie operad. This space is the last nonzero power of the radical of the Tits algebra. It is also the socle of the left ideal of chambers and of the right ideal of Zie elements. Zie elements generalize the classical Lie idempotents. They include Dynkin elements associated to generic half-spaces which generalize the classical Dynkin idempotent. Another important object is the lune-incidence algebra which marks the beginning of noncommutative Möbius theory. These ideas are also brought upon the study of the Solomon descent algebra. The monograph is written with clarity and in sufficient detail to make it accessible to graduate students. It can also serve as a useful reference to experts.

Combinatorics plays a prominent role in contemporary mathematics, due to the vibrant development it has experienced in the last two decades and its many interactions with other subjects. This book arises from the INdAM conference "CoMeTA 2013 - Combinatorial Methods in Topology and Algebra,'' which was held in Cortona in September 2013. The event brought together emerging and leading researchers at the crossroads of Combinatorics, Topology and Algebra, with a particular focus on new trends in subjects such as: hyperplane arrangements; discrete geometry and combinatorial topology; polytope theory and triangulations of manifolds; combinatorial algebraic geometry and commutative algebra; algebraic combinatorics; and combinatorial representation theory. The book is divided into two parts. The first expands on the topics discussed at the conference by providing additional background and explanations, while the second presents original contributions on new trends in the topics addressed by the conference.

The goal of this monograph is to develop Hopf theory in a new setting which features centrally a real hyperplane arrangement. The new theory is parallel to the classical theory of connected Hopf algebras, and relates to it when specialized to the braid arrangement. Joyal's theory of combinatorial species, ideas from Tits' theory of buildings, and Rota's work on incidence algebras inspire and find a common expression in this theory. The authors introduce notions of monoid, comonoid, bimonoid, and Lie monoid relative to a fixed hyperplane arrangement. They also construct universal bimonoids by using generalizations of the classical notions of shuffle and quasishuffle, and establish the Borel-Hopf, Poincar -Birkhoff-Witt, and Cartier-Milnor-Moore theorems in this setting. This monograph opens a vast new area of research. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in the areas of hyperplane arrangements, semigroup theory, Hopf algebras, algebraic Lie theory, operads, and category theory.

This book presents recent advances in the mathematical theory of discrete optimization, particularly those supported by methods from algebraic geometry, commutative algebra, convex and discrete geometry, generating functions, and other tools normally considered outside the standard curriculum in optimization.

This book collects the scientific contributions of a group of leading experts who took part in the INdAM Meeting held in Cortona in September 2014. With combinatorial techniques as the central theme, it focuses on recent developments in configuration spaces from various perspectives. It also discusses their applications in areas ranging from representation theory, toric geometry and geometric group theory to applied algebraic topology.

In this book, the authors propose efficient characterizations of the non-convex regions that appear in many control problems, such as those involving collision/obstacle avoidance and, in a broader sense, in the description of feasible sets for optimization-based control design involving contradictory objectives. The text deals with a large class of systems that require the solution of appropriate optimization problems over a feasible region, which is neither convex nor compact. The proposed approach uses the combinatorial notion of hyperplane arrangement, partitioning the space by a finite collection of hyperplanes, to describe non-convex regions efficiently. Mixed-integer programming techniques are then applied to propose acceptable formulations of the overall problem. Multiple constructions may arise from the same initial problem, and their complexity under various parameters - space dimension, number of binary variables, etc. - is also discussed. This book is a useful tool for academic researchers and graduate students interested in non-convex systems working in control engineering area, mobile robotics and/or optimal planning and decision-making.

Pattern Recognition on Oriented Matroids covers a range of innovative problems in combinatorics, poset and graph theories, optimization, and number theory that constitute a far-reaching extension of the arsenal of committee methods in pattern recognition. The groundwork for the modern committee theory was laid in the mid-1960s, when it was shown that the familiar notion of solution to a feasible system of linear inequalities has ingenious analogues which can serve as collective solutions to infeasible systems. A hierarchy of dialects in the language of mathematics, for instance, open cones in the context of linear inequality systems, regions of hyperplane arrangements, and maximal covectors (or topes) of oriented matroids, provides an excellent opportunity to take a fresh look at the infeasible system of homogeneous strict linear inequalities – the standard working model for the contradictory two-class pattern recognition problem in its geometric setting. The universal language of oriented matroid theory considerably simplifies a structural and enumerative analysis of applied aspects of the infeasibility phenomenon. The present book is devoted to several selected topics in the emerging theory of pattern recognition on oriented matroids: the questions of existence and applicability of matroidal generalizations of committee decision rules and related graph-theoretic constructions to oriented matroids with very weak restrictions on their structural properties; a study (in which, in particular, interesting subsequences of the Farey sequence appear naturally) of the hierarchy of the corresponding tope committees; a description of the three-tope committees that are the most attractive approximation to the notion of solution to an infeasible system of linear constraints; an application of convexity in oriented matroids as well as blocker constructions in combinatorial optimization and in poset theory to enumerative problems on tope committees; an attempt to clarify how elementary changes (one-element reorientations) in an oriented matroid affect the family of its tope committees; a discrete Fourier analysis of the important family of critical tope committees through rank and distance relations in the tope poset and the tope graph; the characterization of a key combinatorial role played by the symmetric cycles in hypercube graphs. Contents Oriented Matroids, the Pattern Recognition Problem, and Tope Committees Boolean Intervals Dehn–Sommerville Type Relations Farey Subsequences Blocking Sets of Set Families, and Absolute Blocking Constructions in Posets Committees of Set Families, and Relative Blocking Constructions in Posets Layers of Tope Committees Three-Tope Committees Halfspaces, Convex Sets, and Tope Committees Tope Committees and Reorientations of Oriented Matroids Topes and Critical Committees Critical Committees and Distance Signals Symmetric Cycles in the Hypercube Graphs