We survey the known results about simple permutations. In particular, we present a number of recent enumerative and structural results pertaining to simple permutations, and show how simple permutations play an important role in the study of permutation classes. We demonstrate how classes containing only finitely many simple permutations satisfy a number of special properties relating to enumeration, partial well-order and the property of being finitely based.
This survey of alternating permutations and Euler numbers includes refinements of Euler numbers, other occurrences of Euler numbers, longest alternating subsequences, umbral enumeration of classes of alternating permutations, and the cd-index of the symmetric group.
A consecutive pattern in a permutation $π$ is another permutation $σ$ determined by the relative order of a subsequence of contiguous entries of $π$. Traditional notions such as descents, runs and peaks can be viewed as particular examples of consecutive patterns in permutations, but the systematic study of these patterns has flourished in the last 15 years, during which a variety of different techniques have been used. We survey some interesting developments in the subject, focusing on exact and asymptotic enumeration results, the classification of consecutive patterns into equivalence classe…
This is a presentation of recent work on quantum permutation groups. Contains: a short introduction to operator algebras and Hopf algebras; quantum permutation groups, and their basic properties; diagrams, integration formulae, asymptotic laws, matrix models; the hyperoctahedral quantum group, free wreath products, quantum automorphism groups of finite graphs, graphs having no quantum symmetry; complex Hadamard matrices, cocycle twists of the symmetric group, quantum groups acting on 4 points; remarks and comments.
A family $\mathcal{A}$ of sets is said to be \emph{$t$-intersecting} if any two sets in $\mathcal{A}$ have at least $t$ common elements. A central problem in extremal set theory is to determine the size or structure of a largest $t$-intersecting sub-family of a given family $\mathcal{F}$. We give a survey of known results, conjectures and open problems for various important families $\mathcal{F}$, namely, power sets, levels of power sets, hereditary families, families of signed sets, families of labeled sets, and families of permutations. We also provide some extensions and consequences of kno…
An occurrence of a classical pattern p in a permutation πis a subsequence of πwhose letters are in the same relative order (of size) as those in p. In an occurrence of a generalized pattern, some letters of that subsequence may be required to be adjacent in the permutation. Subsets of permutations characterized by the avoidance--or the prescribed number of occurrences--of generalized patterns exhibit connections to an enormous variety of other combinatorial structures, some of them apparently deep. We give a short overview of the state of the art for generalized patterns.
We prove that it is decidable if a finitely based permutation class contains infinitely many simple permutations, and establish an unavoidable substructure result for simple permutations: every sufficiently long simple permutation contains an alternation or oscillation of length k.
A simple permutation is one that does not map a nontrivial interval onto an interval. It was recently proved by Albert and Atkinson that a permutation class with only finitely simple permutations has an algebraic generating function. We extend this result to enumerate permutations in such a class satisfying additional properties, e.g., the even permutations, the involutions, the permutations avoiding generalised permutations, and so on.
When specialized to the context of permutations, Schmerl and Trotter's Theorem states that every simple permutation which is not a parallel alternation contains a simple permutation with one fewer entry. We give an elementary proof of this result.
The simple permutations in two permutation classes --- the 321-avoiding permutations and the skew-merged permutations --- are enumerated using a uniform method. In both cases, these enumerations were known implicitly, by working backwards from the enumeration of the class, but the simple permutations had not been enumerated explicitly. In particular, the enumeration of the simple skew-merged permutations leads to the first truly structural enumeration of this class as a whole. The extension of this method to a wider collection of classes namely grid classes of infinite paths is discussed.
A simple permutation is one which maps no proper non-singleton interval onto an interval. We consider the enumeration of simple permutations from several aspects. Our results include a straightforward relationship between the ordinary generating function for simple permutations and that for all permutations, that the coefficients of this series are not P-recursive, an asymptotic expansion for these coefficients, and a number of congruence results.
We prove that every sufficiently long simple permutation contains two long almost disjoint simple subsequences. This result has applications to the enumeration of restricted permutations. For example, it immediately implies a result of Bona and (independently) Mansour and Vainshtein that for any r, the number of permutations with at most r copies of 132 has an algebraic generating function.
This is a brief survey of some open problems on permutation patterns, with an emphasis on subjects not covered in the recent book by Kitaev, \emph{Patterns in Permutations and words}. I first survey recent developments on the enumeration and asymptotics of the pattern 1324, the last pattern of length 4 whose asymptotic growth is unknown, and related issues such as upper bounds for the number of avoiders of any pattern of length $k$ for any given $k$. Other subjects treated are the Möbius function, topological properties and other algebraic aspects of the poset of permutations, ordered by conta…
A permutation is called {\it {block-wise simple}} if it contains no interval of the form $p_1\oplus p_2$ or $p_1 \ominus p_2$. We present this new set of permutations and explore some of its combinatorial properties. We present a generating function for this set, as well as a recursive formula for counting block-wise simple permutations. Following Tenner, who founded the notion of interval posets, we characterize and count the interval posets corresponding to block-wise simple permutations. We also present a bijection between these interval posets and certain tiling's of the $n$-gon. Finally, …
We present some combinatorial interpretations for coefficients appearing in series partitioning the permutations avoiding 132 along marked mesh patterns. We identify for patterns in which only one parameter is non zero the combinatorial family in bijection with 132-avoiding permutations and also preserving the statistic counted by the marked mesh pattern.
We study the random composition of a small family of O(n^3) simple permutations on {0,1}^n. Specifically we ask how many randomly selected simple permutations need be composed to yield a permutation that is close to k-wise independent. We improve on the results of Gowers 1996 and Hoory, Magen, Myers and Rackoff 2004, and show that up to a polylogarithmic factor, n^2*k^2 compositions of random permutations from this family suffice. In addition, our results give an explicit construction of a degree O(n^3) Cayley graph of the alternating group of 2^n objects with a spectral gap Omega(2^{-n}/n^2),…
Gessel conjectured that the two-sided Eulerian polynomial, recording the common distribution of the descent number of a permutation and that of its inverse, has non-negative integer coefficients when expanded in terms of the gamma basis. This conjecture has been proved recently by Lin. We conjecture that an analogous statement holds for simple permutations, and use the substitution decomposition tree of a permutation (by repeated inflation) to show that this would imply the Gessel-Lin result. We provide supporting evidence for this stronger conjecture.
We present a simple bijection between permutation matrices and descending plane partitions without special parts. This bijection is already mentioned in work of P. Lalonde (without giving the details); it involves the inversion words of permutations and the (well-known) representation of descending plane partitions as families of non--intersecting lattice paths. (Taking a short detour, we will also exhibit how the (well--known) enumeration of descending plane partitions follows easily from the evaluation of Andrew's determinant.)
We characterise those permutation classes whose simple permutations are monotone griddable. This characterisation is obtained by identifying a set of nine substructures, at least one of which must occur in any simple permutation containing a long sum of 21s.
Different ways to describe a permutation, as a sequence of integers, or a product of Coxeter generators, or a tree, give different choices to define a simple permutation. We recollect few of them, define new types of simple permutations, and analyze their interconnections and some asymptotic and geometrical properties of these classes.
We show how the sign of a permutation can be deduced from the tableaux induced by the permutation under the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence. The result yields a simple proof of a conjecture on the squares of imbalances raised by Stanley.
We provide a simple injective proof that the number of 132-avoiding permutations with a unique longest increasing subsequence is at least as large as the number of 132-avoiding permutations without a unique longest increasing subsequence.
A deflatable permutation class is one in which the simple permutations are contained in a proper subclass. Deflatable permutation classes are often easier to describe and enumerate than non-deflatable ones. Some theorems which guarantee non-deflatability are proved and examples of both deflatable and non-deflatable principal classes are given.
In this article, we describe an algorithm to determine whether a permutation class C given by a finite basis B of excluded patterns contains a finite number of simple permutations. This is a continuation of the work initiated in [Brignall, Ruskuc, Vatter, Simple permutations: decidability and unavoidable substructures, 2008], and shares several aspects with it. Like in this article, the main difficulty is to decide whether C contains a finite number of proper pin-permutations, and this decision problem is solved using automata theory. Moreover, we use an encoding of proper pin-permutations by …
We give two simple proofs of a conjecture of Richard Stanley concerning the equidistribution of derangements and alternating permutations with the maximal number of fixed points.
Starting from the two-species partially asymmetric simple exclusion process, we study a subclass of signed permutations, the partially signed permutations, using the combinatorics of Laguerre histories. From this physical and bijective point of view, we obtain a natural descent statistic on partially signed permutations; as well as partially signed permutations patterns.
We consider the problem of characterizing the class of those permutation groups that are the symmetry groups of Boolean functions. These are exactly the automorphism groups of hypergraphs. They are also called the relation groups. In this paper we describe those of them that are simple as abstract groups. This is done by combining results based on the classification of finite simple groups with the description of intransitive actions of simple groups. We also obtain a complete characterization of those simple permutation groups that have regular sets, and prove that (with one exception) if a s…
We discuss both simple and more subtle connections between the numbers of permutations and full cycles with some restrictions,in particular, between the numbers of permutations and full cycles with prescribed up-down structure.
The problem of describing the invariance groups of unordered relations, called briefly \emph{relation groups}, goes back to classical work by H. Wielandt. In general, the problem turned out to be hard, and so far it has been settled only for a few special classes of permutation groups. The problem have been solved, in particular, for the class of primitive permutation groups, using the classification of finite simple groups and other deep results of permutation group theory. In this paper we show that, if $G$ is a finite simple primitive permutation group other then the alternating group $A_n$…
We answer a question of R. J. Mathar and confirm that the counting sequence for $\bar{2}413\bar{5}$-avoiding permutations is the Invert transform of the Bell numbers. The proof relies on a simple decomposition of these permutations and the known fact that $\bar{2}413$-avoiding permutations are counted by the Bell numbers.
We use stack words to find a new, simple proof for the best known upper bound for the number of 3-stack sortable permutations of a given length. This is the first time that stack words are used to obtain such a result.
A pattern class is a set of permutations closed under the formation of subpermutations. Such classes can be characterised as those permutations not involving a particular set of forbidden permutations. A simple collection of necessary and sufficient conditions on sets of forbidden permutations which ensure that the associated pattern class is of polynomial growth is determined. A catalogue of all such sets of forbidden permutations having three or fewer elements is provided together with bounds on the degrees of the associated enumerating polynomials.
We provide a bijective proof of a formula of Auli and the author expressing the number of inversion sequences with no three consecutive equal entries in terms of the number of non-derangements, that is, permutations with fixed points. Additionally, we give bijective proofs of two simple recurrences for the number of non-derangements.
We present a bijection between 321- and 132-avoiding permutations that preserves the number of fixed points and the number of excedances. This gives a simple combinatorial proof of recent results of Robertson, Saracino and Zeilberger, and the first author. We also show that our bijection preserves additional statistics, which extends the previous results.
Let $s$ denote West's stack-sorting map. A permutation is called $t-\textit{sorted}$ if it is of the form $s^t(μ)$ for some permutation $μ$. We prove that the maximum number of descents that a $t$-sorted permutation of length $n$ can have is $\left\lfloor\frac{n-t}{2}\right\rfloor$. When $n$ and $t$ have the same parity and $t\geq 2$, we give a simple characterization of those $t$-sorted permutations in $S_n$ that attain this maximum. In particular, the number of such permutations is $(n-t-1)!!$.
We give a combinatorial formula for the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials $P_{x,w}$ in the symmetric group when $w$ is a 321-hexagon-avoiding permutation. Our formula, which depends on a combinatorial framework developed by Deodhar, can be expressed in terms of a simple statistic on all subexpressions of any fixed reduced expression for $w$. We also show that $w$ being 321-hexagon-avoiding is equivalent to several other conditions, such as the Bott-Samelson resolution of the Schubert variety $X_w$ being small. We conclude with a simple method for completely determining the singular locus of $X_w$ wh…
This article presents a methodology that automatically derives a combinatorial specification for the permutation class C = Av(B), given its basis B of excluded patterns and the set of simple permutations in C, when these sets are both finite. This is achieved considering both pattern avoidance and pattern containment constraints in permutations.The obtained specification yields a system of equations satisfied by the generating function of C, this system being always positiveand algebraic. It also yields a uniform random sampler of permutations in C. The method presentedis fully algorithmic.
We present an algorithm running in time O(n ln n) which decides if a wreath-closed permutation class Av(B) given by its finite basis B contains a finite number of simple permutations. The method we use is based on an article of Brignall, Ruskuc and Vatter which presents a decision procedure (of high complexity) for solving this question, without the assumption that Av(B) is wreath-closed. Using combinatorial, algorithmic and language theoretic arguments together with one of our previous results on pin-permutations, we are able to transform the problem into a co-finiteness problem in a complete…
We study the total number of occurrences of several vincular (also called generalized) patterns and other statistics, such as the major index and the Denert statistic, on permutations avoiding a pattern of length 3, extending results of Bona (2010, 2012) and Homberger (2012). In particular, for 2-3-1-avoiding permutations, we find the total number of occurrences of any vincular pattern of length 3. In some cases the answer is given by simple expressions involving binomial coefficients. The tools we use are bijections with Dyck paths, generating functions, and block decompositions of permutatio…
In 1986 S. Sattolo introduced a simple algorithm for uniform random generation of cyclic permutations on a fixed number of symbols. This algorithm is very similar to the standard method for generating a random permutation, but is less well known. We consider both methods in a unified way, and discuss their relation with exhaustive generation methods. We analyse several random variables associated with the algorithms and find their grand probability generating functions, which gives easy access to moments and limit laws.
We present a simple bijective proof of the fact that matchings of [2n] with N nestings are equinumerous to partially directed self avoiding walks confined to the symmetric wedge defined by y=+-x, with n east steps and N north steps. A very similar construction connects permutations with N nestings and PDSAWs remaining below the x-axis, again with N north steps. Furthermore, both bijections transport several combinatorially meaningful parameters.
Hypermaps were introduced as an algebraic tool for the representation of embeddings of graphs on an orientable surface. Recently a bijection was given between hypermaps and indecomposable permutations; this sheds new light on the subject by connecting a hypermap to a simpler object. In this paper, a bijection between indecomposable permutations and labelled Dyck paths is proposed, from which a few enumerative results concerning hypermaps and maps follow. We obtain for instance an inductive formula for the number of hypermaps with n darts, p vertices and q hyper-edges; the latter is also the nu…
A universal cycle for permutations of length $n$ is a cyclic word or permutation, any factor of which is order-isomorphic to exactly one permutation of length $n$, and containing all permutations of length $n$ as factors. It is well known that universal cycles for permutations of length $n$ exist. However, all known ways to construct such cycles are rather complicated. For example, in the original paper establishing the existence of the universal cycles, constructing such a cycle involves finding an Eulerian cycle in a certain graph and then dealing with partially ordered sets. In this paper, …
In this short note we present a simple combinatorial trick which can be effectively applied to show the non--existence of sharply transitive sets of permutations in certain finite permutation groups.
We study the number of 231-avoiding permutations with $j$-descents and maximum drop is less than or equal to $k$ which we denote by $a_{n,231,j}^{(k)}$. We show that $a_{n,231,j}^{(k)}$ also counts the number of Dyck paths of length $2n$ with $n-j$ peaks and height $\leq k+1$, and the number of ordered trees with $n$ edges, $j+1$ internal nodes, and of height $\leq k+1$. We show that the generating functions for the $a_{n,231,j}^{(k)}$s with $k$ fixed satisfy a simple recursion. We also use the combinatorics of ordered trees to prove new explicit formulas for $a_{n,231,j}^{(k)}$ as a function …
In this paper we present a simple framework to study various distance problems of permutations, including the transposition and block-interchange distance of permutations as well as the reversal distance of signed permutations. These problems are very important in the study of the evolution of genomes. We give a general formulation for lower bounds of the transposition and block-interchange distance from which the existing lower bounds obtained by Bafna and Pevzner, and Christie can be easily derived. As to the reversal distance of signed permutations, we translate it into a block-interchange …
We survey the theory of increasing and decreasing subsequences of permutations. Enumeration problems in this area are closely related to the RSK algorithm. The asymptotic behavior of the expected value of the length is(w) of the longest increasing subsequence of a permutation w of 1,2,...,n was obtained by Vershik-Kerov and (almost) by Logan-Shepp. The entire limiting distribution of is(w) was then determined by Baik, Deift, and Johansson. These techniques can be applied to other classes of permutations, such as involutions, and are related to the distribution of eigenvalues of elements of the…
A "floorplan" is a rectangle subdivided into smaller rectangular sections by horizontal and vertical line segments. Each section in the floorplan is called a "block". Two floorplans are considered equivalent if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the blocks in the two floorplans such that the relative position relationship of the blocks in one floorplan is the same as the relative position relationship of the corresponding blocks in another floorplan. The objects of "Mosaic floorplans" are the same as floorplans, but an alternative definition of equivalence is used. Two mo…
We present an easily defined countable family of permutations of the natural numbers for which explicit rearrangements (i.e., the sums induced by the permutations) can be computed. The digamma function proves to be the key tool for the computations found here for the alternating harmonic series. The permutations $ϕ$ under consideration are simple in a sense: they are involutions ($ϕ\circϕ$ is the identity function). We show that the countable set of rearrangements obtained from the simple involutions considered below are dense in the reals.
This article presents a methodology that automatically derives a combinatorial specification for a permutation class C, given its basis B of excluded patterns and the set of simple permutations in C, when these sets are both finite. This is achieved considering both pattern avoidance and pattern containment constraints in permutations. The obtained specification yields a system of equations satisfied by the generating function of C, this system being always positive and algebraic. It also yields a uniform random sampler of permutations in C. The method presented is fully algorithmic.
We introduce a new product for permutation groups. It takes as input two permutation groups, M and N, and produces an infinite group M [X] N which carries many of the permutational properties of M. Under mild conditions on M and N the group M [X] N is simple. As a permutational product, its most significant property is the following: M [X] N is primitive if and only if M is primitive but not regular, and N is transitive. Despite this remarkable similarity with the wreath product in product action, M [X] N and M Wr N are thoroughly dissimilar. The product provides a general way to build exotic …
We prove that the grades of simple modules indexed by boolean permutations, over the incidence algebra of the symmetric group with respect to the Bruhat order, are given by Lusztig's a-function. Our arguments are combinatorial, and include a description of the intersection of two principal order ideals when at least one permutation is boolean. An important object in our work is a reduced word written as minimally many runs of consecutive integers, and one step of our argument shows that this minimal quantity is equal to the length of the second row in the permutation's shape under the Robinson…
Using a blend of combinatorics and geometry, we give an algorithm for algebraically finding all flags in any zero-dimensional intersection of Schubert varieties with respect to three transverse flags, and more generally, any number of flags. In particular, the number of flags in a triple intersection is also a structure constant for the cohomology ring of the flag manifold. Our algorithm is based on solving a limited number of determinantal equations for each intersection (far fewer than the naive approach). These equations may be used to compute Galois and monodromy groups of intersections of…
