Sign-graded posets, unimodality of WW-polynomials and the Charney-Davis Conjecture

We generalize the notion of graded posets to what we call sign-graded (labeled) posets. We prove that the $W$-polynomial of a sign-graded poset is symmetric and unimodal. This extends a recent result of Reiner and Welker who proved it for graded posets by associating a simplicial polytopal sphere to each graded poset $P$. By proving that the $W$-polynomials of sign-graded posets has the right sign at -1, we are able to prove the Charney-Davis Conjecture for these spheres (whenever they are flag).Comment: 14 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

Counterexamples to the Neggers-Stanley conjecture

The Neggers-Stanley conjecture (also known as the Poset conjecture) asserts that the polynomial counting the linear extensions of a partially ordered set on $\{1,2,...,p\}$ by their number of descents has real zeros only. We provide counterexamples to this conjecture.Comment: 4 page

Examples and counterexamples in Ehrhart theory

This article provides a comprehensive exposition about inequalities that the coefficients of Ehrhart polynomials and $h^*$-polynomials satisfy under various assumptions. We pay particular attention to the properties of Ehrhart positivity as well as unimodality, log-concavity and real-rootedness for $h^*$-polynomials. We survey inequalities that arise when the polytope has different normality properties. We include statements previously unknown in the Ehrhart theory setting, as well as some original contributions in this topic. We address numerous variations of the conjecture asserting that IDP polytopes have a unimodal $h^*$-polynomial, and construct concrete examples that show that these variations of the conjecture are false. Explicit emphasis is put on polytopes arising within algebraic combinatorics. Furthermore, we describe and construct polytopes having pathological properties on their Ehrhart coefficients and roots, and we indicate for the first time a connection between the notions of Ehrhart positivity and $h^*$-real-rootedness. We investigate the log-concavity of the sequence of evaluations of an Ehrhart polynomial at the non-negative integers. We conjecture that IDP polytopes have a log-concave Ehrhart series. Many additional problems and challenges are proposed.Comment: Comments welcome