47 research outputs found
The Eulerian Distribution on Involutions is Indeed Unimodal
Let I_{n,k} (resp. J_{n,k}) be the number of involutions (resp. fixed-point
free involutions) of {1,...,n} with k descents. Motivated by Brenti's
conjecture which states that the sequence I_{n,0}, I_{n,1},..., I_{n,n-1} is
log-concave, we prove that the two sequences I_{n,k} and J_{2n,k} are unimodal
in k, for all n. Furthermore, we conjecture that there are nonnegative integers
a_{n,k} such that This statement is stronger than
the unimodality of I_{n,k} but is also interesting in its own right.Comment: 12 pages, minor changes, to appear in J. Combin. Theory Ser.
The Eulerian distribution on the involutions of the hyperoctahedral group is unimodal
The Eulerian distribution on the involutions of the symmetric group is
unimodal, as shown by Guo and Zeng. In this paper we prove that the Eulerian
distribution on the involutions of the hyperoctahedral group, when viewed as a
colored permutation group, is unimodal in a similar way and we compute its
generating function, using signed quasisymmetric functions.Comment: 11 pages, zero figure
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 ,
. 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 and are invariant under the action and use this to
prove unimodality properties for a -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 -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
The symmetric and unimodal expansion of Eulerian polynomials via continued fractions
This paper was motivated by a conjecture of Br\"{a}nd\'{e}n (European J.
Combin. \textbf{29} (2008), no.~2, 514--531) about the divisibility of the
coefficients in an expansion of generalized Eulerian polynomials, which implies
the symmetric and unimodal property of the Eulerian numbers. We show that such
a formula with the conjectured property can be derived from the combinatorial
theory of continued fractions. We also discuss an analogous expansion for the
corresponding formula for derangements and prove a -analogue of the fact
that the (-1)-evaluation of the enumerator polynomials of permutations (resp.
derangements) by the number of excedances gives rise to tangent numbers (resp.
secant numbers). The -analogue unifies and generalizes our recent
results (European J. Combin. \textbf{31} (2010), no.~7, 1689--1705.) and that
of Josuat-Verg\`es (European J. Combin. \textbf{31} (2010), no.~7, 1892--1906).Comment: 19 pages, 2 figure
On two unimodal descent polynomials
The descent polynomials of separable permutations and derangements are both
demonstrated to be unimodal. Moreover, we prove that the -coefficients
of the first are positive with an interpretation parallel to the classical
Eulerian polynomial, while the second is spiral, a property stronger than
unimodality. Furthermore, we conjecture that they are both real-rooted.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure