The major index has been deeply studied from the early 1900s and recently has been generalized in different directions, such as the case of labeled forests and colored permutations. In this thesis we define new types of labelings for forests in which the labels are colored integers. We extend the definition of the flag-major index for these labelings and we present an analogue of well known major index hook length formulas. Finally, this study (which has just apparently a simple combinatoric nature) allows us to show a notion of duality for two particular families of groups obtained from the product G(r,n)×G(r,m).

In 'Involutory reflection groups and their models' (F. Caselli, 2010), a uniform Gelfand model is constructed for all complex reflection groups G(r,p,n) satisfying GCD(p,n)=1,2 and for all their quotients modulo a scalar subgroup. The present work provides a refinement for this model. The final decomposition obtained is compatible with the Robinson-Schensted generalized correspondence.

A permutation is said to avoid a pattern if it does not contain any subsequence which is order-isomorphic to it. Donald Knuth, in the first volume of his celebrated book "The art of Computer Programming", observed that the permutations that can be computed (or, equivalently, sorted) by some particular data structures can be characterized in terms of pattern avoidance. In more recent years, the topic was reopened several times, while often in terms of sortable permutations rather than computable ones. The idea to sort permutations by using one of Knuth’s devices suggests to look for a deterministic procedure that decides, in linear time, if there exists a sequence of operations which is able to convert a given permutation into the identical one. In this thesis we show that, for the stack and the restricted deques, there exists an unique way to implement such a procedure. Moreover, we use these sorting procedures to create new sorting algorithms, and we prove some unexpected commutation properties between these procedures and the base step of bubblesort. We also show that the permutations that can be sorted by a combination of the base steps of bubblesort and its dual can be expressed, once again, in terms of pattern avoidance. In the final chapter we give an alternative proof of some enumerative results, in particular for the classes of permutations that can be sorted by the two restricted deques. It is well-known that the permutations that can be sorted through a restricted deque are counted by the Schrӧder numbers. In the thesis, we show how the deterministic sorting procedures yield a bijection between sortable permutations and Schrӧder paths.

Error correcting codes has become an integral part of the design of reliable data transmissions and storage systems. They are also playing an increasingly important role for other applications such as the analysis of pseudorandom sequences and the design of secure cryptosystems. Cyclic codes form a large class of widely used error correcting codes, including important codes such as the Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, quadratic residue (QR) codes and Golay codes. In this thesis I tackle two problems related to cyclic codes: finding low-weight codewords and decoding. Computing efficiently low-weight codewords of a cyclic code is often a key ingredient of correlation attacks to LFSR-based stream ciphers. The best general purpose algorithm is based on the generalized birthday problem. In the first part of the thesis I show an alternative approach based on discrete logarithms which has - in some cases relevant for applications - much lower memory complexity requirements and a comparable time complexity. The second part of the thesis is devoted to some results concerning efficient bounded-distance decoding for cyclic codes.

In this thesis we consider some problems concerning polynomials over finite fields. The first topic is the action of some groups on irreducible polynomials. We describe orbits and stabilizers. Next, we consider transformations of irreducible polynomials by quadratic and cubic maps and study the irreducibility of the polynomials obtained. Finally, starting from PN functions and monomials, we generalize this concept, introducing k-PN monomials and classifying them for small values of k and for fields of order p, p^2 and p^4.

In this thesis we provide known and new results which explain the relationship between the actual minimum distance of cyclic codes, bounds that use only information on the defining sets of cyclic codes to lower bound the distance (root bounds) and bounds that also need the knowledge of the defining sets of all cyclic subcodes (border bounds). We propose a new bound which is provably better of many known bounds and that can be computed in polynomial time with respect to the length of the code. We sketch how to use the generalized Newton identities to give alternative proofs of known bounds. Finally, we use Groebner bases to prove that the optimal root bound can be computed in finite time.

In this thesis we work on problems related to tensor decomposition from a geometrical perspective. In the first part of the thesis we focus on the identifiability problem, which amounts to understand in how many ways a tensor can be decomposed as a minimal sum of elementary tensors. In particular we completely classify the identifiability of any tensor up to rank 3. In the second part of the thesis we continue to work with specific elementsand we introduce the notion of r-thTerracini locus of a Segre variety. This is the locus containing all points for which the differential of the map between the r-th abstarct secant variety and the r-th secant variety of a Segre variety drops rank. We completely determine the r-th Terracini locus of any Segre variety in the case of r = 2, 3.

I consider the problem of classifying the semisimple orbits of a theta-group. For this purpose, once a preliminary presentation of the theoretical subjects where my problem arises from, I first give an algorithm to compute a Cartan subspace; subsequently I describe how to compute the little Weyl group.

In this work we deal with both Coding Theory and Entropy Extraction for Random Number Generators to be used for cryptographic purposes. We start from a thorough analysis of known bounds on code parameters and a study of the properties of Hadamard codes. We find of particular interest the Griesmer bound, which is a strong result known to be true only for linear codes. We try to extend it to all codes, and we can determine many parameters for which the Griesmer bound is true also for nonlinear codes. In case of systematic codes, a class of codes including linear codes, we can derive stronger results on the relationship between the Griesmer bound and optimal codes. We also construct a family of optimal binary systematic codes contradicting the Griesmer bound. Finally, we obtain new bounds on the size of optimal codes. Regarding the study of random number generation, we analyse linear extractors and their connection with linear codes. The main result on this topic is a link between code parameters and the entropy rate obtained by a processed random number generator. More precisely, to any linear extractor we can associate the generator matrix of a linear code. Then, we link the total variation distance between the uniform distribution and the probability mass function of a random number generator with the weight distribution of the linear code associated to the linear extractor. Finally, we present a collection of results derived while pursuing a way to classify optimal codes, such as a probabilistic algorithm to compute the weight distribution of linear codes and a new bound on the size of codes.

In the first part of the thesis I produce and implement an algorithm for obtaining generators of the unit group of the integral group ring ZG of finite abelian group G. We use our implementation in MAGMA of this algorithm to compute the unit group of ZG for G of order up to 110. In the second part of the thesis I show how to construct multiplication tables of the semisimple real Lie algebras. Next I give an algorithm, based on the work of Sugiura, to find all Cartan subalgebra of such a Lie algebra. Finally I show algorithms for finding semisimple subalgebras of a given semisimple real Lie algebra.