Mark C. Wilson

Discrete structures model a vast array of objects ranging from DNA sequences to internet networks. The theory of generating functions provides an algebraic framework for discrete structures to be enumerated using mathematical tools. This book is the result of 25 years of work developing analytic machinery to recover asymptotics of multivariate sequences from their generating functions, using multivariate methods that rely on a combination of analytic, algebraic, and topological tools. The resulting theory of analytic combinatorics in several variables is put to use in diverse applications from mathematics, combinatorics, computer science, and the natural sciences. This new edition is even more accessible to graduate students, with many more exercises, computational examples with Sage worksheets to illustrate the main results, updated background material, additional illustrations, and a new chapter providing a conceptual overview.

This book is the first to treat the analytic aspects of combinatorial enumeration from a multivariate perspective. Analytic combinatorics is a branch of enumeration that uses analytic techniques to estimate combinatorial quantities: generating functions are defined and their coefficients are then estimated via complex contour integrals. The multivariate case involves techniques well known in other areas of mathematics but not in combinatorics. Aimed at graduate students and researchers in enumerative combinatorics, the book contains all the necessary background, including a review of the uses of generating functions in combinatorial enumeration as well as chapters devoted to saddle point analysis, Groebner bases, Laurent series and amoebas, and a smattering of differential and algebraic topology. All software along with other ancillary material can be located via the book's website, http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mcw/Research/mvGF/asymultseq/ACSVbook/.