Shifted Hankel determinants of Catalan numbers and related results II: Backward shifts

By prepending zeros to a given sequence Hankel determinants of backward shifts of this sequence become meaningful. We obtain some results for the sequences of Catalan numbers and of some numbers and polynomials which are related to Catalan numbers and propose conjectures for sequences of convolution powers of Catalan numbers.Comment: 14 page

Some experimental observations about Hankel determinants of convolution powers of Catalan numbers

Computer experiments suggest some conjectures about Hankel determinants of convolution powers of Catalan numbers. Unfortunately, for most of them I have no proofs. I would like to present them anyway hoping that someone finds them interesting and can prove them.Comment: 10 page

Cumulants, lattice paths, and orthogonal polynomials

A formula expressing free cumulants in terms of the Jacobi parameters of the corresponding orthogonal polynomials is derived. It combines Flajolet's theory of continued fractions and Lagrange inversion. For the converse we discuss Gessel-Viennot theory to express Hankel determinants in terms of various cumulants.Comment: 11 pages, AMS LaTeX, uses pstricks; revised according to referee's suggestions, in particular cut down last section and corrected some wrong attribution

Some determinants of path generating functions

We evaluate four families of determinants of matrices, where the entries are sums or differences of generating functions for paths consisting of up-steps, down-steps and level steps. By specialisation, these determinant evaluations have numerous corollaries. In particular, they cover numerous determinant evaluations of combinatorial numbers - most notably of Catalan, ballot, and of Motzkin numbers - that appeared previously in the literature.Comment: 35 pages, AmS-TeX; minor corrections; final version to appear in Adv. Appl. Mat