6/19/13 Gmail - perfect squared cylinders

Ellen Vitercik <ellen.vitercik@gmail.com>

perfect squared cylinders

Stuart Anderson <stuart.errol.anderson@gmail.com> Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 1:33 AM
To: Casey Mann <cmann@uttyler.edu>, Emily_Peirce@baylor.edu, ellen.vitercik@gmail.com, Joseph Dinatale
<jd4732@stu.armstrong.edu>
Cc: Thom Sulanke <tsulanke@indiana.edu>

Hi Casey, Emily, Ellen and Joseph.

It's delightful that you are interested in perfect squared quotient surfaces/

We have managed to generate squared cylinders by modifying plantri and

using some squared square code that processes plantri graphs. The
files are in http://hep.physics.indiana.edu/~tsulanke/squared-cylinder.tar.gz
Plantri generates embeddings of many kinds of planar graphs. See
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/plantri/ and
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/plantri/fullgen-guide.txt
The plantri add-on, write_cylinder.c, writes graphs in the planar-code
format (without "<<planar code>>").

Each graph written is 3-connected and is obtained from a (at least)

2-connected planar graph by adding an edge connecting two vertices
which are not on the same face. When the graph is written the
vertices are relabeled so that the vertices of the additional edge are
1 and 2. In roddy_cylinder.cpp, a slightly modified version of
roddy.cpp, only the battery edge between vertices 1 and 2 is checked.

To check if the results made sense, we looked for Simple Perfect

Square-Cylinders with order 20 or less. In agreement with Augusteijn
and Duijvestijn, we found none with order less than 20. We found 18
with order 20. Two of these were the ones they found, 79x79 and
81x81. The other 16 were all 80x80 and can be obtained by combining
two cyl-nets and so were not found by A and D.

The code was developed further and an option to display dissections in

postscript was included.

Thom did runs up to 10 vertices which includes the 18 configurations

of order 20. The software also found 8 of order 21.

He ran 100 batch jobs (oneN.pbs) and included the output/error files. He used
sumlines -f sumlines_10.fmt ../squared-dist/cyl.10.*.pbs.* > cylinder_n10.sum
to summarize the counts.

*.planar.out contains Bouwkamp code.

*.planar.out.ps contains postscript code.

This work was not taken any further. Much more could be done. The
existing software could be used to explore higher orders and the
roddy_cylinder software can be optimised to run much faster. This can
be done by replacing the Boost uBlas matrix code with faster matrix

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=5d0883fa2a&view=pt&search=inbox&msg=13f5b233ee638ab7 1/5
6/19/13 Gmail - perfect squared cylinders

and linear algebra routines, and as the Laplacian matrix is

positive-semidefinite, LDL decomposition should replace LU
decomposition.

There is the article by M Goldberg, The Squaring of Developable

Surfaces,. Scripta Mathematica 18 (1952),17-
24, 140-141, but we didnt use this approach.

In "The Dissection of Rectangles, Cylinders, Tori and Mobius Bands

into Squares', by S.J. Chapman (1993) he finds the
smallest squared cylinders with 9 squares but goes no further with
cylinders. Ian Stewart (July 1997) in his Mathematical Recreations
column in Scientific American revisits some of the squared rectangle
and squared square findings, along with Chapman's work, he mentions
David Gale's column in the Mathematical Intelligencer. I have a David
Gale book "Tracking the Automatic Ant". There is a chapter 9, Tiling
a Torus: Cutting a Cake, this discusses Chapman's results again. There
is a later chapter in the book (chapter 12) which has a section
'More of squaring squares and rectangles', but no mention of
cylinders, tori or mobius strips.

It appears there are no other published results on squared cylinders

apart from A&D (A. AUGUSTEIJN AND A. J. W. DUIJVESTIJN, "Simple
Perfect Square-Cylinders of Low Order", Journal of Combinatorial
Theory, Series B 35 (1983) 333-337), the references above and the
website page http://www.squaring.net/sq/sc/spsc/spsc.html.

The approach of Brooks, Smith, Stone and Tutte was to derive a matrix
from the planar graph. They called this Kirchhoff matrix, more
commonly known these days as the discrete Laplacian matrix L, it can
be formed in 3 ways;
1. For an undirected graph with n vertices define each entry in the
nxn L matrix as either -1 if there is an edge between two nodes or
zero if there is not, the diagonal entries are equal to the number of
non-zero entries in that row or column (the row and column sum is the
same as the matrix is symmetrical about the diagonal)
2. A is the adjacency matrix of the same graph, and D is the matrix of
vertex degrees (the number of edges incident with that vertex) then L
=D-A
3. B is the vertex-edge incidence matrix of the graph, and B' is the
transpose matrix of B then L = BB'

This matrix L, constructed using any of the 3 approaches above is

singular, if we take the determinant of L it is zero. So we remove
any row and column to get a reduced matrix, this will have a non-zero
determinant

Brooks, Smith, Stone and Tutte wrote (The dissection of rectangles

into squares, 1940) that the determinant (which they called the
Complexity) of the discrete Laplacian matrix (he called this the
Kirchhoff matrix) with one row and column removed is positive for
connected planar graphs. The Complexity also represents the number of
spanning trees of the graph, this is Kirchhoff's matrix-tree theorem.
They took the Complexity as measure of the total current entering a
vertex (the positive pole) and leaving at another vertex (the negative
pole), then the voltage drop between the 2 poles was the determinant
of the matrix obtained from L by striking out the rows and columns of
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=5d0883fa2a&view=pt&search=inbox&msg=13f5b233ee638ab7 2/5
6/19/13 Gmail - perfect squared cylinders

the two poles. So the horizontal side of a squared rectangle is made

equal to the Complexity of the corresponding electrical network and
the height and other potential drops between specified vertices can
also be calculated, giving currents in the edges of the electrical
graph. The edges all have unit resistence so current in an edge is
equal to the voltage drop in the edge. The edge currents and
voltages can all be given as integers. Each planar graph also has a
dual graph, graph vertices correspond to dual faces and vice versa and
each graph edge corresponds to a particular dual edge and vice versa.
The current in a graph edge is the same as the current in the
corresponding dual edge but the voltages in graph nodes and dual nodes
do not correspond to each other and are different. In the electrical
networks of graph and dual for a squared rectangle, the voltages of
graph vertices and the voltages of dual vertices correspond to the
horizontal and vertical positions of the lines in the dissection and
the edge currents in both correspond to the sizes of the squares in
the dissection.

There is a recent paper written one of us which gives some detail on

how these calculations can be done in the case of perfect squared
squares; http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0599 (esp see p21-33)

There are several problems to be solved when trying to discover

squared tori using the electrical network approach.

The first is generating all specified graphs which embed on the

surface of a torus.
The second is calculating the currents and voltages in each graph
The third is recognising if the electrical network represents a
'square' squared torus or a 'non-square' squared torus
The fourth is converting the electrical network to a canonical
dissection code for cataloguing and display

The first problem can be solved by Thom Sulanke's modified surftri;

There is now a working version of surftri which generates general

embeddings in the torus. It is available at:
http://hep.physics.indiana.edu/~tsulanke/graphs/surftri/downloads/surftri.0.983.tgz

The second problem is currently unsolved;

Fifty years after the original 1940 paper Brooks, R.L., C.A.B. Smith,
A.H. Stone and W.T. Tutte, got back together and published another
paper; Determinants and current flows in electric networks, Discrete
Mathematics 100 (1992) 291-301.
They consider electrical networks in which current enters at a single
node and leaves at another. It has long been known that the currents
and potential differences in such networks can be expressed in terms
of determinants, or alternatively as counts of trees. Here they give
alternative determinantal expressions.
In the last part of the paper they consider electrical networks in
non-planar graphs, "But, with a nonplanar network, it is much less
easy to find how to apply the techniques described above." They give
an example of the calculation of currents in a non-planar network, in
their particular example they use Kirchhoff's first and second laws to
derive enough independent linear equations so they can be solved to
give the currents as determinants. But they note that "...it is not
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=5d0883fa2a&view=pt&search=inbox&msg=13f5b233ee638ab7 3/5
6/19/13 Gmail - perfect squared cylinders

obvious how we can find a matrix like H to give a simple method of

calculation. "
As Brooks, Smith, Stone and Tutte noted their methods work best where
the current enters at a single node and leaves at another. However
this is not the case with a squared torus, there is no top or bottom
or boundary where the whole current leaves and re-enters the circuit.

Thom Sulanke wrote recently;

My final attempt was to assume the following. For a graph embedded in
a torus require (a) that the current around each face is zero, (b)
that the current around a chosen non-contractible cycle of edges is
non-zero, and (c) the sum of the currents at each vertex is zero. If
the embedding has N vertices, E edges, and F faces then N-E+F=0 for a
torus. (a) provides F equations with F-1 being independent. (b)
provides 1 equation. (c) provides N equations with N-1 being
independent. So there are F-1 + 1 + N-1 = F+N-1 = E-1 equations with
E unknowns (the currents). There should be a unique relatively prime
integer solution. The solution would depend on the non-contractible
cycle so multiple cycles might need to be used to find all squared
tori. I did not get far enough along to have to deal with this
problem. I have a plug-in for surftri with provides the lists of
edges around each face and around one non-contractible cycle. I would
be glad to share it with anyone.
The plug-in and associated files are in:
http://hep.physics.indiana.edu/~tsulanke/write_non_contract.tgz

The third problem could be solved if the second problem was solved,
but it might be better to solve the third problem before the second
If a squared dissection was derived from a torus it would not be hard
to check if the squared 'grid' distance a round the hole of the torus
was the same as the squared 'grid' distance around the ring of the
torus.
But there appears to be another way, which may be more efficient. It
would involve testing the Kirchhoff matrix determinant, only graphs
which pass the test would have their voltages and currents calculated.

In the 1940 paper Brooks, Smith, Stone and Tutte proved that for the
electrical network of a squared square the Complexity can be
factorised as 2fS where f is a square free number and S is a perfect
square and the square root of S is the side length of the squared
square (after dividing all the elements of the dissection by any
common factors) "Let G be any network of unit resistances, let C be
its complexity, and let a, b, x and y be vertices of G. Then it is
shown in [1940 paper] that [ab.ab] [xy.xy] ≡ [ab.xy]^2 mod C. If G is
the polar net, with poles x and y, of a squared square S we have C =
[xy . xy]. Writing C = mk2, where m is square-free, we find that mk
divides [ab . xy]. Thus to find the reduced currents corresponding to
the squares of S we must divide the associated full currents by the
large reduction factor mk."(W.T.Tutte, 'The Quest of the Perfect
Square' The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 72, No. 2, Part 2:
Computers and Computing (Feb., 1965), pp. 29-35 )

The Matrix-Tree theorem makes no assumption of planarity so it seemed

possible that this may also work for other squared embeddings which
are not planar. I tested this with the squared torus from Gambini's
thesis;
http://pageperso.lif.univ-mrs.fr/~alain.colmerauer/ArchivesPublications/Gambini/carres.pdf
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=5d0883fa2a&view=pt&search=inbox&msg=13f5b233ee638ab7 4/5
6/19/13 Gmail - perfect squared cylinders

(Chapter 6 p79-86)

The torus has a side of 181, I derived a graph from the torus ,
created a Kirchhoff matrix from it and the determinant of the matrix
196566 factored as; 2*3*181*181. It seems this method could be used
to search Thom Sulanke's surftri tori graphs for squared torus
candidates. Not every graph which produces this factorisation is a
squared square but it eliminates 96% from contention.
The remaining task is convert the candidate graphs to actual
dissections by finding the sizes of the squares in the dissection.
With planar graphs this is done by electrical network theory, making
one edge a battery and calculating all the voltages in the nodes and
the currents in the wires. This doesn't work with tori as there is no
battery wire as such. However it seems to me that if the 'size' of
the squared torus is known one should be able to find the element
sizes by linear algebra, possibly constructing a number of independent
paths around the hole of the torus and solving for the unknowns. Each
linear equation would be equal to 181 in the case of Gambini's torus.

Stuart has a program which will perform the Kirchhoff matrix

factorisation, along with graphs and dual graph embeddings of
Gambini's 181 torus;
http://www.squaring.net/downloads/det-factor-torus-graph.zip

The fourth problem should not be difficult, something similar to the

cylinder bouwkampcode and postscript renderer should work for squared
tori.

Stuart Anderson
Thom Sulanke
[Quoted text hidden]

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=5d0883fa2a&view=pt&search=inbox&msg=13f5b233ee638ab7 5/5