The combinatorics of adinkras

Abstract

Adinkras are graphical tools created to study representations of supersymmetry algebras. Besides having inherent interest for physicists, the study of adinkras has already shown nontrivial connections with coding theory and Clifford algebras. Furthermore, adinkras offer many easy-to-state and accessible mathematical problems of algebraic, combinatorial, and computational nature. In this work, we make a self-contained treatment of the mathematical foundations of adinkras that slightly generalizes the existing literature. Then, we make new connections to other areas including homological algebra, theory of polytopes, Pfaffian orientations, graph coloring, and poset theory. Selected results include the enumeration of odd dashings for all adinkraizable chromotopologies, the notion of Stiefel-Whitney classes for codes and their vanishing conditions, and the enumeration of all Hamming cube adinkras up through dimension 5.