Structure and Decomposition of Deltoids in Abelian Groups

Abstract

Deltoids provide a natural framework for studying defective (partial) matchings in abelian groups, and we develop both structure and existence results in this setting. Given finite subsets $A$ and $B$ of an abelian group $G$, a matching is a bijection $f:A\to B$ such that $af(a)\notin A$ for all $a\in A$, a definition motivated by the study of canonical forms for symmetric tensors. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a partial matching with any prescribed defect, and then describe the minimal unavoidable defect for a pair $(A,B)$. We also define and examine a defective version of Chowla sets in the matching context. We prove a structure theorem identifying obstructions to the existence of partial matchings with small defect. Finally, within the deltoid setup, we establish max-min results on the partitioning of $A$ and $B$ into left- and right-admissible sets. Our tools mix results from transversal theory with ideas from additive number theory.

arXiv commentMinor typographical errors have been corrected. To appear in Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics