Is there a name for the set of "unique" combinations of the powerset of $2^n$ modulo permutation?

267 Views Asked by At

I was studying an algorithm on $k$-combinations of $n$-bit strings and realised that, my brute-force approach would spend lots of time on "structurally equivalent" bitstring combinations, that could be transformed into another bitstring combination for which a solution had already been computed by permuting bit-positions.

For readability I'll denote $n$-bit strings as elements of $2^{\{0,\dots,n-1\}}$, e.g. 1011 $= \{0,1,3\}$

Then, for $n=3$ and $k=2$, the only "unique" combinations are the following: $$ \{\emptyset, \{0\}\}\\ \{\emptyset, \{0, 1\}\}\\ \{\emptyset, \{0, 1, 2\}\}\\ \{\{0\}, \{1\}\}\\ \{\{0\}, \{0, 1\}\}\\ \{\{0\}, \{1, 2\}\}\\ \{\{0\}, \{0, 1, 2\}\}\\ \{\{0, 1\}, \{0, 2\}\}\\ \{\{0, 1\}, \{0, 1, 2\}\}\\ $$ $\{\{0\}, \{0, 2\}\}$ is not "unique", as it can be mapped to $\{\{0\}, \{0, 1\}\}$ by permuting $1$ and $2$.

Since it seems to me that others should have had similar problems before:

Is there a name for this subset of combinations?

P.S.: My best guess at a formal definition would be a set $X$, such that forall $A \in {2^n}^k$ ($k$-combinations of the powerset of $\{0,\dots,n-1\}$) $$ A \in X \Leftrightarrow A = \min\limits_\sigma(\sigma(A)) $$ i.e., $A$ is in $X$, iff it is the minimal element in the set of all pictures over all permutations (lifting permutations to sets of sets and taking the minimum over the lexicographical ordering).

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On

You can characterize your pairs by giving the following:

  1. Number of elements in the first set, $f$
  2. Number of elements in the second set, $s$
  3. Number of elements in the intersection of the two sets, $t$

coupled with the requirement that the first set have no more elements than the second. Because you run out of distinct elements you must have $t \ge f+s-n$. The first set consists of the lowest $f$ numbers, $0$ through $f-1$. The second set consists of the lowest $t$ numbers and then the numbers from $f$ through $f+s-1-t$. If $k$ gets larger you can extend the number of elements list easily but the number of overlaps grows as $2^k-k-1$. I don't know of a name for it.