Flag-symmetry of the poset of shuffles and a local action of the symmetric group

We show that the poset of shuffles introduced by Greene in 1988 is flag-symmetric, and we describe a "local" permutation action of the symmetric group on the maximal chains which is closely related to the flag symmetric function of the poset. A key tool is provided by a new labeling of the maximal chains of a poset of shuffles, which is also used to give bijective proofs of enumerative properties originally obtained by Greene. In addition we define a monoid of multiplicative functions on all posets of shuffles and describe this monoid in terms of a new operation on power series in two variables.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figure

EL-labelings, Supersolvability and 0-Hecke Algebra Actions on Posets

We show that a finite graded lattice of rank n is supersolvable if and only if it has an EL-labeling where the labels along any maximal chain form a permutation. We call such a labeling an S_n EL-labeling and we consider finite graded posets of rank n with unique top and bottom elements that have an S_n EL-labeling. We describe a type A 0-Hecke algebra action on the maximal chains of such posets. This action is local and gives a representation of these Hecke algebras whose character has characteristic that is closely related to Ehrenborg's flag quasi-symmetric function. We ask what other classes of posets have such an action and in particular we show that finite graded lattices of rank n have such an action if and only if they have an S_n EL-labeling.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures. Added JCTA reference and included some minor corrections suggested by refere

Decomposition and enumeration in partially ordered sets

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-126).by Patricia Hersh.Ph.D

Enumeration of the distinct shuffles of permutations

A shuffle of two words is a word obtained by concatenating the two original words in either order and then sliding any letters from the second word back past letters of the first word, in such a way that the letters of each original word remain spelled out in their original relative order. Examples of shuffles of the words $1234$ and $5678$ are, for instance, $15236784$ and $51236748$. In this paper, we enumerate the distinct shuffles of two permutations of any two lengths, where the permutations are written as words in the letters $1,2,3,\ldots ,m$ and $1,2,3,\ldots ,n$, respectively

Geometric, Algebraic, and Topological Combinatorics

The 2019 Oberwolfach meeting "Geometric, Algebraic and Topological Combinatorics" was organized by Gil Kalai (Jerusalem), Isabella Novik (Seattle), Francisco Santos (Santander), and Volkmar Welker (Marburg). It covered a wide variety of aspects of Discrete Geometry, Algebraic Combinatorics with geometric flavor, and Topological Combinatorics. Some of the highlights of the conference included (1) Karim Adiprasito presented his very recent proof of the $g$-conjecture for spheres (as a talk and as a "Q\&A" evening session) (2) Federico Ardila gave an overview on "The geometry of matroids", including his recent extension with Denham and Huh of previous work of Adiprasito, Huh and Katz

Generalized Noncrossing Partitions and Combinatorics of Coxeter Groups

This memoir constitutes the author's PhD thesis at Cornell University. It serves both as an expository work and as a description of new research. At the heart of the memoir, we introduce and study a poset $NC^{(k)}(W)$ for each finite Coxeter group $W$ and for each positive integer $k$. When $k=1$, our definition coincides with the generalized noncrossing partitions introduced by Brady-Watt and Bessis. When $W$ is the symmetric group, we obtain the poset of classical $k$-divisible noncrossing partitions, first studied by Edelman. Along the way, we include a comprehensive introduction to related background material. Before defining our generalization $NC^{(k)}(W)$, we develop from scratch the theory of algebraic noncrossing partitions $NC(W)$. This involves studying a finite Coxeter group $W$ with respect to its generating set $T$ of {\em all} reflections, instead of the usual Coxeter generating set $S$. This is the first time that this material has appeared in one place. Finally, it turns out that our poset $NC^{(k)}(W)$ shares many enumerative features in common with the ``generalized nonnesting partitions'' of Athanasiadis and the ``generalized cluster complexes'' of Fomin and Reading. In particular, there is a generalized ``Fuss-Catalan number'', with a nice closed formula in terms of the invariant degrees of $W$, that plays an important role in each case. We give a basic introduction to these topics, and we describe several conjectures relating these three families of ``Fuss-Catalan objects''.Comment: Final version -- to appear in Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society. Many small improvements in exposition, especially in Sections 2.2, 4.1 and 5.2.1. Section 5.1.5 deleted. New references to recent wor