A q-analogue of spanning trees : nilpotent transformations over finite fields

• Main Author: Yin, Jingbin
• Other Authors: Richard P. Stanley.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010
• Subjects: Mathematics.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50270

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 2009. === This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. === Includes bibliographical references (p. 67). === The main result of this work is a q-analogue relationship between nilpotent transformations and spanning trees. For example, nilpotent endomorphisms on an n-dimensional vector space over Fq is a q-analogue of rooted spanning trees of the complete graph Kn. This relationship is based on two similar bijective proofs to calculate the number of spanning trees and nilpotent transformations, respectively. We also discuss more details about this bijection in the cases of complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and cycles. It gives some refinements of the q-analogue relationship. As a corollary, we find the total number of nilpotent transformations with some restrictions on Jordan block sizes. === by Jingbin Yin. === Ph.D.