Labeled Chip-Firing on Undirected $k$-ary Trees

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Inagaki, Ryota, Lin, Aaron
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Inagaki, Ryota
Lin, Aaron
author_facet Inagaki, Ryota
Lin, Aaron
contents We explore labeled chip-firing on undirected $k$-ary trees, trees where every vertex has degree $k+1$. First, we extend known results for binary trees from Musiker and Nguyen, including the endgame and the locations of the smallest and largest chips, as well as relations between chips at different vertices. Then, inspired by recent work on the binary tree by the first author, Khovanova, and Luo, we use these properties to construct an upper bound, which we call the zigzag bound, on the number of stable configurations in labeled chip-firing on $k$-ary trees with $\frac{k^{\ell}-1}{k-1}$ labeled chips starting at the root. We further provide a novel lower bound on the number of stable configurations of $k$-ary trees, complementing our upper bounds.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17358
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Labeled Chip-Firing on Undirected $k$-ary Trees
Inagaki, Ryota
Lin, Aaron
Combinatorics
05C57, 05C63, 05A15
We explore labeled chip-firing on undirected $k$-ary trees, trees where every vertex has degree $k+1$. First, we extend known results for binary trees from Musiker and Nguyen, including the endgame and the locations of the smallest and largest chips, as well as relations between chips at different vertices. Then, inspired by recent work on the binary tree by the first author, Khovanova, and Luo, we use these properties to construct an upper bound, which we call the zigzag bound, on the number of stable configurations in labeled chip-firing on $k$-ary trees with $\frac{k^{\ell}-1}{k-1}$ labeled chips starting at the root. We further provide a novel lower bound on the number of stable configurations of $k$-ary trees, complementing our upper bounds.
title Labeled Chip-Firing on Undirected $k$-ary Trees
topic Combinatorics
05C57, 05C63, 05A15
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17358