A Large Dihedral Symmetry of the Set of Alternating Sign Matrices

Benjamin Wieland

Published 2000-06-30, updated 2000-07-01Version 2

We prove a conjecture of Cohn and Propp, which refines a conjecture of Bosley and Fidkowski about the symmetry of the set of alternating sign matrices (ASMs). We examine data arising from the representation of an ASM as a collection of paths connecting 2n vertices and show it to be invariant under the dihedral group D_{2n} rearranging those vertices, which is much bigger than the group of symmetries of the square. We also generalize conjectures of Propp and Wilson relating some of this data for different values of n.