Asymptotics of multivariate sequences, part III: quadratic points Yuliy Baryshnikov 1 Robin Pemantle 2,3 ABSTRACT: We consider a number of combinatorial problems in which rational generating func- tions may be obtained, whose denominators have factors with certain singularities. Specifically, there exist points near which one of the factors is asymptotic to a nondegenerate quadratic. We compute the asymptotics of the coefficients of such a generating function. The computation requires some topological deformations as well as Fourier-Laplace transforms of generalized functions. We apply the results of the theory to specific combinatorial problems, such as Aztec diamond tilings, cube groves, and multi-set permutations. Keywords: generalized function, Fourier transform, Fourier-Laplace, lacuna, multivariate generating function, hyperbolic polynomial, amoeba, Aztec diamond, quantum random walk, random tiling, cube grove. Subject classification: Primary: 05A16 ; Secondary: 83B20, 35L99. 1Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, 700 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636,
[email protected] labs.com 2Research supported in part by National Science Foundation grant # DMS 0603821 3University of Pennsylvania, Department of Mathematics, 209 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA, pe-
[email protected] Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background and motivation . 1 1.2 Methods and organization . 4 1.3 Comparison with other techniques . 7 2 Notation and preliminaries 8 2.1 The Log map and amoebas . 9 2.2 Dual cones, tangent cones and normal cones . 10 2.3 Hyperbolicity for homogeneous polynomials . 11 2.4 Hyperbolicity and semi-continuity for log-Laurent polynomials on the amoeba boundary 14 2.5 Critical points . 20 2.6 Quadratic forms and their duals .