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First page of Mutation-acyclicity in rank four is decidable but not semialgebraic

Mutation-acyclicity in rank four is decidable but not semialgebraic

Kymani T. K. Armstrong-Williams, Edward Hirst, Blake Jackson, Kyu-Hwan Lee

math.CO Oct 26, 2026 · v1 hep-th math.RT
The main results on decidability of rank-four mutation-acyclicity are formalized in Lean 4 with Mathlib; sources are in a public repository.
We prove that mutation-acyclicity of quivers on four vertices is decidable. If a four-vertex quiver $Q$ is mutation-acyclic, then some sequence of mutations takes it to an acyclic quiver without any arrow multiplicity exceeding $\operatorname{max}\{\operatorname{ht}(Q),m(Q)\}$, where $\operatorname{ht}(Q)$ is the largest arrow multiplicity of $Q$ and $m(Q)$ is the Markov invariant of Fomin and Neville evaluated on the totally proper wiggle class of $Q$. A search within a computable form of this bound decides mutation-acyclicity of four-vertex quivers with $O(h^{24})$ states for input height $h\ge1$. Together with a theorem of Caldero and Keller, it also decides mutation equivalence of two four-vertex quivers up to relabeling whenever one of them is mutation-acyclic. We conjecture that $\operatorname{ht}(Q)$ alone suffices as the bound, which would reduce the search to $O(h^{6})$ states, and we verify this for all four-vertex quivers of height at most three. In the other direction, for every $n\ge4$ we construct an affine family of connected $n$-vertex quivers whose nonnegative even members are mutation-acyclic and whose positive odd members are mutation-cyclic. Consequently, unlike in rank three, no fixed finite Boolean combination of polynomial equations and strict polynomial inequalities in the arrow weights (i.e., a semialgebraic criterion) decides mutation-acyclicity of $n$-vertex quivers, even allowing polynomials that are not mutation-invariant. Finally, we correct the criterion for four-vertex quivers of height at most two stated in our earlier paper, and recover its classification counts with short certificates. The calculations in the proof of the height bound are verified by computer for all values of their parameters.

No algorithm was known for deciding whether a quiver with four or more vertices is mutation-acyclic, meaning some mutation sequence takes it to a quiver without directed cycles. The rank-three case is settled by a semialgebraic Markov-constant criterion.

The authors prove a height bound: a mutation-acyclic four-vertex quiver reaches an acyclic quiver along a route whose arrow multiplicities stay at most max{ht(Q), m(Q)}, where m(Q) is a Fomin–Neville Markov invariant. The proof reroutes high segments of mutation sequences through local replacement lemmas, with case calculations checked by a Python program. They also construct affine families of n-vertex quivers whose members alternate between mutation-acyclic and mutation-cyclic. The main results are formalized in Lean 4 with Mathlib.

Mutation-acyclicity of four-vertex quivers is decidable by a search with O(h^24) states. For every n≥4 no semialgebraic criterion decides mutation-acyclicity. The authors also correct an earlier criterion for quivers of height at most two while recovering the earlier counts of 534 and 133 connected quivers.