Pairs of eventually constant maps and nilpotent pairs

Abstract

Tom Leinster gave a bijective correspondence between the set of operators on a finite-dimensional vector space $V$ and the set of pairs consisting of a nilpotent operator and a vector in $V$. Over a finite field this bijection implies that the probability that an operator be nilpotent is the reciprocal of the number of vectors in $V$. We generalize this correspondence to pairs of operators between pairs of vector spaces and determine the probability that a random pair of operators be nilpotent. We also determine the set-theoretical counterpart of this construction and compute the number of eventually constant pairs of maps between two finite sets, closely related to the number of spanning trees in a complete bipartite graph.

15 pages, 3 figures