Multi-colored dimer models in one-dimension: lattice paths and generalized Rogers--Ramanujan identities

TL;DR

This paper introduces multi-colored dimer models on segments and circles, deriving their generating functions, which relate to generalized Rogers--Ramanujan identities, and explores their combinatorial and graph-theoretic properties.

Contribution

It provides closed-form formulas for the generating functions of multi-colored dimer models and connects them to generalized Rogers--Ramanujan identities and combinatorial path structures.

Findings

Generating functions satisfy Fibonacci-like recurrence relations.

Large size limit generating functions exhibit generalized Rogers--Ramanujan identities.

Connections established between dimer models, Dyck and Motzkin paths, and graph independent sets.

Abstract

We define and study multi-colored dimer models on a segment and on a circle. The multivariate generating functions for the dimer models satisfy the recurrence relations similar to the one for Fibonacci numbers. We give closed formulae for the generating functions. We show that, in the large size limit with specializations of the formal variables, the generating functions exhibit the summations appearing in generalized Rogers--Ramanujan identities. Further, the generating functions of the dimer models have infinite product formulae for general values of formal variables in the large size limit. These formulae are generalizations of Rogers--Ramanujan identities for multi variables. We also give other several specializations which exhibit simple combinatorial formulae. The analysis of the correlation functions, which we call emptiness formation probabilities and moments, leads to the application of the formal power series associated to the Dyck, Motzkin and Schr\"oder paths to the generating functions for the dimer models. We give descriptions of the generating functions of finite size in terms of these combinatorial objects, Dyck and Motzkin paths with statistics. We have three additional results. First, the convoluted generating functions for Fibonacci, Catalan and Motzkin numbers are shown to be expressed as generating functions of Fibonacci, Dyck and Motzkin words with the weights given by binomial coefficients. The second one is a weight preserving correspondence between a Motzkin path and a set of Dyck paths. The third one is a connection of the generating functions for the dimer models to the generating functions of independent sets of special classes of graphs.