267 research outputs found
Symmetries of statistics on lattice paths between two boundaries
We prove that on the set of lattice paths with steps N=(0,1) and E=(1,0) that
lie between two fixed boundaries T and B (which are themselves lattice paths),
the statistics `number of E steps shared with B' and `number of E steps shared
with T' have a symmetric joint distribution. To do so, we give an involution
that switches these statistics, preserves additional parameters, and
generalizes to paths that contain steps S=(0,-1) at prescribed x-coordinates.
We also show that a similar equidistribution result for path statistics follows
from the fact that the Tutte polynomial of a matroid is independent of the
order of its ground set. We extend the two theorems to k-tuples of paths
between two boundaries, and we give some applications to Dyck paths,
generalizing a result of Deutsch, to watermelon configurations, to
pattern-avoiding permutations, and to the generalized Tamari lattice. Finally,
we prove a conjecture of Nicol\'as about the distribution of degrees of k
consecutive vertices in k-triangulations of a convex n-gon. To achieve this
goal, we provide a new statistic-preserving bijection between certain k-tuples
of non-crossing paths and k-flagged semistandard Young tableaux, which is based
on local moves reminiscent of jeu de taquin.Comment: Small typos corrected, and journal reference and grant info adde
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