A Reciprocity Theorem for Monomer-Dimer Coverings

The dimer problem arose in a thermodynamic study of diatomic molecules, and was abstracted into one of the most basic and natural problems in both statistical mechanics and combinatoric mathematics. Given a rectangular lattice of volume V in d dimensions, the dimer problem loosely speaking is to count the number of different ways dimers (dominoes) may be laid down in the lattice (without overlapping) to completely cover it. Each dimer covers two neighboring vertices. It is kn...

The enumeration of perfect matchings of graphs is equivalent to the dimer problem which has applications in statistical physics. A graph $G$ is said to be $n$-rotation symmetric if the cyclic group of order $n$ is a subgroup of the automorphism group of $G$. Jockusch (Perfect matchings and perfect squares, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, 67(1994), 100-115) and Kuperberg (An exploration of the permanent-determinant method, Electron. J. Combin., 5(1998), #46) proved independently tha...

We define and study multi-colored dimer models on a segment and on a circle. The multivariate generating functions for the dimer models satisfy the recurrence relations similar to the one for Fibonacci numbers. We give closed formulae for the generating functions. We show that, in the large size limit with specializations of the formal variables, the generating functions exhibit the summations appearing in generalized Rogers--Ramanujan identities. Further, the generating func...

The classical monomer-dimer model in two-dimensional lattices has been shown to belong to the \emph{``#P-complete''} class, which indicates the problem is computationally ``intractable''. We use exact computational method to investigate the number of ways to arrange dimers on $m \times n$ two-dimensional rectangular lattice strips with fixed dimer density $\rho$. For any dimer density $0 < \rho < 1$, we find a logarithmic correction term in the finite-size correction of the f...

Generalizing results of Temperley, Brooks, Smith, Stone and Tutte and others we describe a natural equivalence between three planar objects: weighted bipartite planar graphs; planar Markov chains; and tilings with convex polygons. This equivalence provides a measure-preserving bijection between dimer coverings of a weighted bipartite planar graph and spanning trees on the corresponding Markov chain. The tilings correspond to harmonic functions on the Markov chain and to ``dis...

Recently an expansion as a power series in 1/d has been presented for the specific entropy of a complete dimer covering of a d-dimensional hypercubic lattice. This paper extends from 3 to 10 the number of terms known in the series. Likewise an expansion for the entropy, dependent on the dimer-density p, of a monomer-dimer system, involving a sum sum_k a_k(d) p^k, has been recently offered. We herein extend the number of the known expansion coefficients from 6 to 20 for the hy...

The first 20 Mayer series coefficients for a dimer gas on a rectangular lattice are now known in every dimension, by the work of Butera, Pernici, and the author, [1]. In the present work we initiate a numerical study of a very promising asymptotic form. We let $\mathcal{S}$ be \begin{equation} \mathcal{S} = \{ r , k , c_{0} , c_{1}, .... c_{r} \} \nonumber \end{equation} with $r$ an integer $\ge 1$, $k$ an integer $\ge 1$, and $c_{i}$ real numbers. For such a set $\mathcal{S}...

The deductive method ruled mathematics for the last 2500 years, now it is the turn of the inductive method. Here we make a modest start by using the inductive method to discover and prove (rigorously) explicit generating functions for the number of dimer (and monomer-dimer) tilings of large families of "skinny" plane regions.

Snake graphs are a class of planar graphs that are important in the theory of cluster algebras. Indeed, the Laurent expansions of the cluster variables in cluster algebras from surfaces are given as weight generating functions for 1-dimer covers (or perfect matchings) of snake graphs. Moreover, the enumeration of 1-dimer covers of snake graphs provides a combinatorial interpretation of continued fractions. In particular, the number of 1-dimer covers of the snake graph $\maths...

In the past three decades, the study of rhombus tilings and domino tilings of various plane regions has been a thriving subfield of enumerative combinatorics. Physicists classify such work as the study of dimer covers of finite graphs. In this article we move beyond dimer covers to trimer covers, introducing plane regions called benzels that play a role analogous to hexagons for rhombus tilings and Aztec diamonds for domino tilings, inasmuch as one finds many (so far mostly c...