Upper bounds for the Stanley-Wilf limit of 1324 and other layered patterns

We prove that the Stanley-Wilf limit of any layered permutation pattern of length $\ell$ is at most $4\ell^2$, and that the Stanley-Wilf limit of the pattern 1324 is at most 16. These bounds follow from a more general result showing that a permutation avoiding a pattern of a special form is a merge of two permutations, each of which avoids a smaller pattern. If the conjecture is true that the maximum Stanley-Wilf limit for patterns of length $\ell$ is attained by a layered pattern then this implies an upper bound of $4\ell^2$ for the Stanley-Wilf limit of any pattern of length $\ell$. We also conjecture that, for any $k\ge 0$, the set of 1324-avoiding permutations with $k$ inversions contains at least as many permutations of length $n+1$ as those of length $n$. We show that if this is true then the Stanley-Wilf limit for 1324 is at most $e^{\pi\sqrt{2/3}} \simeq 13.001954$

Exact enumeration of 1342-avoiding permutations: A close link with labeled trees and planar maps

Solving the first nonmonotonic, longer-than-three instance of a classic enumeration problem, we obtain the generating function $H(x)$ of all 1342-avoiding permutations of length $n$ as well as an {\em exact} formula for their number $S_n(1342)$. While achieving this, we bijectively prove that the number of indecomposable 1342-avoiding permutations of length $n$ equals that of labeled plane trees of a certain type on $n$ vertices recently enumerated by Cori, Jacquard and Schaeffer, which is in turn known to be equal to the number of rooted bicubic maps enumerated by Tutte in 1963. Moreover, $H(x)$ turns out to be algebraic, proving the first nonmonotonic, longer-than-three instance of a conjecture of Zeilberger and Noonan. We also prove that $\sqrt[n]{S_n(1342)}$ converges to 8, so in particular, $lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}(S_n(1342)/S_n(1234))=0$

Real Zeros and Partitions without singleton blocks

We prove that the generating polynomials of partitions of an $n$-element set into non-singleton blocks, counted by the number of blocks, have real roots only and we study the asymptotic behavior of the leftmost roots. We apply this information to find the most likely number of blocks.Comment: 16 page

A self-dual poset on objects counted by the Catalan numbers and a type-B analogue

We introduce two partially ordered sets, $P^A_n$ and $P^B_n$, of the same cardinalities as the type-A and type-B noncrossing partition lattices. The ground sets of $P^A_n$ and $P^B_n$ are subsets of the symmetric and the hyperoctahedral groups, consisting of permutations which avoid certain patterns. The order relation is given by (strict) containment of the descent sets. In each case, by means of an explicit order-preserving bijection, we show that the poset of restricted permutations is an extension of the refinement order on noncrossing partitions. Several structural properties of these permutation posets follow, including self-duality and the strong Sperner property. We also discuss posets $Q^A_n$ and $Q^B_n$ similarly associated with noncrossing partitions, defined by means of the excedence sets of suitable pattern-avoiding subsets of the symmetric and hyperoctahedral groups.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure