The 1/4-phenomenon of placement probabilities of tilings in the Aztec diamond

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Schönfelder, Marcus
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909951079743488
author Schönfelder, Marcus
author_facet Schönfelder, Marcus
contents We consider domino tilings of the Aztec diamond. Using the Domino Shuffling algorithm introduced by Elkies, Kuperberg, Larsen, and Propp in arXiv:math/9201305, we are able to generate domino tilings uniformly at random. In this paper, we investigate the probability of finding a domino at a specific position in such a random tiling. We prove that this placement probability is always equal to $1/4$ plus a rational function, whose shape depends on the location of the domino, multiplied by a position-independent factor that involves only the size of the diamond. This result leads to significantly more compact explicit counting formulas compared to previous findings. As a direct application, we derive explicit counting formulas for the domino tilings of Aztec diamonds with $2\times 2$-square holes at arbitrary positions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_08377
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The 1/4-phenomenon of placement probabilities of tilings in the Aztec diamond
Schönfelder, Marcus
Combinatorics
Probability
05A15 (Primary) 05C70, 60C05, 82B20 (Secondary)
We consider domino tilings of the Aztec diamond. Using the Domino Shuffling algorithm introduced by Elkies, Kuperberg, Larsen, and Propp in arXiv:math/9201305, we are able to generate domino tilings uniformly at random. In this paper, we investigate the probability of finding a domino at a specific position in such a random tiling. We prove that this placement probability is always equal to $1/4$ plus a rational function, whose shape depends on the location of the domino, multiplied by a position-independent factor that involves only the size of the diamond. This result leads to significantly more compact explicit counting formulas compared to previous findings. As a direct application, we derive explicit counting formulas for the domino tilings of Aztec diamonds with $2\times 2$-square holes at arbitrary positions.
title The 1/4-phenomenon of placement probabilities of tilings in the Aztec diamond
topic Combinatorics
Probability
05A15 (Primary) 05C70, 60C05, 82B20 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08377