Binomial ideals of domino tilings (Q1981661)

A \textit{domino} is two unit squares joined along a single edge. A \textit{domino tiling} of a region is a covering of the region with dominos such that there are no gaps or overlaps. From a viewpoint of combinatorial commutative algebra together with algebraic statistics, the paper under review studies how one can move from one tiling to another for the set of all domino tilings of a cubiculated region. First, the authors show that moves for connecting distinct two tilings correspond to binomials in toric ideals of certain bipartite graphs. It is known that toric ideals of bipartite graphs are generated by binomials associated with chordless even cycles. In addition, the authors introduce two relevant ideals (tiling ideals and flip ideals) that are contained in the toric ideal of corresponding bipartite graph. They show that a tiling space of a cubiculated region is flip connected if and only if the tiling ideal is contained in the flip ideal. Finally, they give an alternative proof to the fact that the set of domino tilings of a 2-dimensional simply connected region is connected by flips using algebraic techniques.