Sokal's conjecture on functional-digraph component polynomials

About 10 years old · traced to

Let ψn,k\psi_{n,k} be the number of functional digraphs on [n][n] with kk weakly connected components, and define

ψn(y)=∑k=0nψn,kyk.\bm{\psi}_n(y)=\sum_{k=0}^n\psi_{n,k}y^k.

A functional digraph is a directed graph in which every vertex has out-degree 11; a vertex is cyclic if it lies on a directed cycle. Let [ψn,k]n,k[\psi_{n,k}]_{n,k} denote the lower-triangular counting matrix.

Sokal's functional-digraph conjecture. The following assertions hold: (i) [ψn,k]n,k[\psi_{n,k}]_{n,k} is totally positive; (ii) (ψn(y))n≥0(\bm{\psi}_n(y))_{n\geq0} is coefficientwise Hankel-totally positive in yy; (iii) (ψn+1,1)n≥0(\psi_{n+1,1})_{n\geq0} is Hankel-totally positive, equivalently, it is a Stieltjes moment sequence.

These assertions concern positivity of functional-digraph enumeration matrices, component polynomials, and the connected case. The source gives no resolution, so the conjecture remains open.

References

Primary source

Bao-Xuan Zhu, “Coefficientwise Hankel-total positivity of the row-generating polynomials for the output matrices of certain production matrices”, arXiv:2202.03793 (2024).

Additional references

3 papers in this index state this conjecture (2016–2022). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2006.14485, arXiv:1612.04114.

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.