The n-queens problem

MaRDI QIDQ6377854zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Candida Bowtell, Peter Keevash

Publication date 16 September 2021

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Asymptotic enumeration (05A16) Other designs, configurations (05B30) Hypergraphs (05C65) Edge subsets with special properties (factorization, matching, partitioning, covering and packing, etc.) (05C70)

Abstract: The famous $n$-queens problem asks how many ways there are to place $n$ queens on an $nimesn$ chessboard so that no two queens can attack one another. The toroidal $n$-queens problem asks the same question where the board is considered on the surface of the torus and was asked by P'{o}lya in 1918. Let $Q(n)$ denote the number of $n$-queens configurations on the classical board and $T(n)$ the number of toroidal $n$-queens configurations. P'{o}lya showed that $T(n)>0$ if and only if $nequiv1,5mod6$ and much more recently, in 2017, Luria showed that $T(n)leq((1+o(1))n{e}^{-3}{)}^n$ and conjectured equality when $nequiv1,5mod6$. Our main result is a proof of this conjecture, thus answering P'{o}lya's question asymptotically. Furthermore, we also show that $Q(n)geq((1+o(1))n{e}^{-3}{)}^n$ for all $n$ sufficiently large, which was independently proved by Luria and Simkin. Combined with our main result and an upper bound of Luria, this completely settles a conjecture of Rivin, Vardi and Zimmmerman from 1994 regarding both $Q(n)$ and $T(n)$. Our proof combines a random greedy algorithm to count 'almost' configurations with a complex absorbing strategy that uses ideas from the recently developed methods of randomised algebraic construction and iterative absorption.

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