2-stack pushall sortable permutations

In the 60's, Knuth introduced stack-sorting and serial compositions of stacks. In particular, one significant question arise out of the work of Knuth: how to decide efficiently if a given permutation is sortable with 2 stacks in series? Whether this problem is polynomial or NP-complete is still unanswered yet. In this article we introduce 2-stack pushall permutations which form a subclass of 2-stack sortable permutations and show that these two classes are closely related. Moreover, we give an optimal O(n^2) algorithm to decide if a given permutation of size n is 2-stack pushall sortable and describe all its sortings. This result is a step to the solve the general 2-stack sorting problem in polynomial time.Comment: 41 page

Actions on permutations and unimodality of descent polynomials

We study a group action on permutations due to Foata and Strehl and use it to prove that the descent generating polynomial of certain sets of permutations has a nonnegative expansion in the basis $\{t^i(1+t)^{n-1-2i}\}_{i=0}^m$, $m=\lfloor (n-1)/2 \rfloor$. This property implies symmetry and unimodality. We prove that the action is invariant under stack-sorting which strengthens recent unimodality results of B\'ona. We prove that the generalized permutation patterns $(13-2)$ and $(2-31)$ are invariant under the action and use this to prove unimodality properties for a $q$-analog of the Eulerian numbers recently studied by Corteel, Postnikov, Steingr\'{\i}msson and Williams. We also extend the action to linear extensions of sign-graded posets to give a new proof of the unimodality of the $(P,\omega)$-Eulerian polynomials of sign-graded posets and a combinatorial interpretations (in terms of Stembridge's peak polynomials) of the corresponding coefficients when expanded in the above basis. Finally, we prove that the statistic defined as the number of vertices of even height in the unordered decreasing tree of a permutation has the same distribution as the number of descents on any set of permutations invariant under the action. When restricted to the set of stack-sortable permutations we recover a result of Kreweras.Comment: 19 pages, revised version to appear in Europ. J. Combi

On Embeddability of Buses in Point Sets

Set membership of points in the plane can be visualized by connecting corresponding points via graphical features, like paths, trees, polygons, ellipses. In this paper we study the \emph{bus embeddability problem} (BEP): given a set of colored points we ask whether there exists a planar realization with one horizontal straight-line segment per color, called bus, such that all points with the same color are connected with vertical line segments to their bus. We present an ILP and an FPT algorithm for the general problem. For restricted versions of this problem, such as when the relative order of buses is predefined, or when a bus must be placed above all its points, we provide efficient algorithms. We show that another restricted version of the problem can be solved using 2-stack pushall sorting. On the negative side we prove the NP-completeness of a special case of BEP.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, conference version at GD 201

Affine shuffles, shuffles with cuts, the Whitehouse module, and patience sorting

Type A affine shuffles are compared with riffle shuffles followed by a cut. Although these probability measures on the symmetric group S_n are different, they both satisfy a convolution property. Strong evidence is given that when the underlying parameter $q$ satisfies $gcd(n,q-1)=1$, the induced measures on conjugacy classes of the symmetric group coincide. This gives rise to interesting combinatorics concerning the modular equidistribution by major index of permutations in a given conjugacy class and with a given number of cyclic descents. It is proved that the use of cuts does not speed up the convergence rate of riffle shuffles to randomness. Generating functions for the first pile size in patience sorting from decks with repeated values are derived. This relates to random matrices.Comment: Galley version for J. Alg.; minor revisions in Sec.

Enumeration of Stack-Sorting Preimages via a Decomposition Lemma

We give three applications of a recently-proven "Decomposition Lemma," which allows one to count preimages of certain sets of permutations under West's stack-sorting map $s$. We first enumerate the permutation class $s^{-1}(\text{Av}(231,321))=\text{Av}(2341,3241,45231)$, finding a new example of an unbalanced Wilf equivalence. This result is equivalent to the enumeration of permutations sortable by ${\bf B}\circ s$, where ${\bf B}$ is the bubble sort map. We then prove that the sets $s^{-1}(\text{Av}(231,312))$, $s^{-1}(\text{Av}(132,231))=\text{Av}(2341,1342,\underline{32}41,\underline{31}42)$, and $s^{-1}(\text{Av}(132,312))=\text{Av}(1342,3142,3412,34\underline{21})$ are counted by the so-called "Boolean-Catalan numbers," settling a conjecture of the current author and another conjecture of Hossain. This completes the enumerations of all sets of the form $s^{-1}(\text{Av}(\tau^{(1)},\ldots,\tau^{(r)}))$ for $\{\tau^{(1)},\ldots,\tau^{(r)}\}\subseteq S_3$ with the exception of the set $\{321\}$. We also find an explicit formula for $|s^{-1}(\text{Av}_{n,k}(231,312,321))|$, where $\text{Av}_{n,k}(231,312,321)$ is the set of permutations in $\text{Av}_n(231,312,321)$ with $k$ descents. This allows us to prove a conjectured identity involving Catalan numbers and order ideals in Young's lattice.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1903.0913

Revstack sort, zigzag patterns, descent polynomials of tt-revstack sortable permutations, and Steingr\'imsson's sorting conjecture

In this paper we examine the sorting operator $T(LnR)=T(R)T(L)n$. Applying this operator to a permutation is equivalent to passing the permutation reversed through a stack. We prove theorems that characterise $t$-revstack sortability in terms of patterns in a permutation that we call $zigzag$ patterns. Using these theorems we characterise those permutations of length $n$ which are sorted by $t$ applications of $T$ for $t=0,1,2,n-3,n-2,n-1$. We derive expressions for the descent polynomials of these six classes of permutations and use this information to prove Steingr\'imsson's sorting conjecture for those six values of $t$. Symmetry and unimodality of the descent polynomials for general $t$-revstack sortable permutations is also proven and three conjectures are given

Two Vignettes On Full Rook Placements

Using bijections between pattern-avoiding permutations and certain full rook placements on Ferrers boards, we give short proofs of two enumerative results. The first is a simplified enumeration of the 3124, 1234-avoiding permutations, obtained recently by Callan via a complicated decomposition. The second is a streamlined bijection between 1342-avoiding permutations and permutations which can be sorted by two increasing stacks in series, originally due to Atkinson, Murphy, and Ru\v{s}kuc.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure