On realizability of sign patterns by real polynomials

AbstractA sign pattern (matrix) is a matrix whose entries are from the set {+, −, 0} and a sign vector is a vector whose entries are from the set {+, −, 0}. A sign pattern or sign vector is full if it does not contain any zero entries. The minimum rank of a sign pattern matrix A is the minimum of the ranks of the real matrices whose entries have signs equal to the corresponding entries of A. The notions of essential row sign change number and essential column sign change number are introduced for full sign patterns and condensed sign patterns. By inspecting the sign vectors realized by a list of real polynomials in one variable, a lower bound on the essential row and column sign change numbers is obtained. Using point-line confiurations on the plane, it is shown that even for full sign patterns with minimum rank 3, the essential row and column sign change numbers can differ greatly and can be much bigger than the minimum rank. Some open problems concerning square full sign patterns with large minimum ranks are discussed.

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Sarnak’s conjecture for sequences of almost quadratic word growth

Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems ◽

10.1017/etds.2020.94 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-56

Author(s):

REDMOND MCNAMARA

Keyword(s):

Box Dimension ◽

Multiplicative Functions ◽

Logarithmic Density ◽

Liouville Function ◽

Sign Patterns

Abstract We prove the logarithmic Sarnak conjecture for sequences of subquadratic word growth. In particular, we show that the Liouville function has at least quadratically many sign patterns. We deduce the main theorem from a variant which bounds the correlations between multiplicative functions and sequences with subquadratically many words which occur with positive logarithmic density. This allows us to actually prove that our multiplicative functions do not locally correlate with sequences of subquadratic word growth. We also prove a conditional result which shows that if the ( $\kappa -1$ )-Fourier uniformity conjecture holds then the Liouville function does not correlate with sequences with $O(n^{t-\varepsilon })$ many words of length n where $t = \kappa (\kappa +1)/2$ . We prove a variant of the $1$ -Fourier uniformity conjecture where the frequencies are restricted to any set of box dimension less than $1$ .

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