We consider two related problems arising from a question of R. Graham on quasirandom phenomena in permutation patterns. A ``pattern'' in a permutation $σ$ is the order type of the restriction of $σ: [n] \to [n]$ to a subset $S \subset [n]$. First, is it possible for the pattern counts in a permutation to be exactly equal to their expected values under a uniform distribution? Attempts to address this question lead naturally to an interesting number theoretic problem: when does $k!$ divide $\binom{n}{k}$? Second, if the tensor product of a permutation with large random permutations is random-like in its pattern counts, what must the pattern counts of the original permutation be? A recursive formula is proved which uses a certain permutation ``contraction.''
We use recurrences (alias difference equations) to prove the longstanding conjecture that the two most important permutation statistics, namely the number of inversions and the major index, are asymptotically joint-independently-normal. We even derive more-precise-than needed asymptotic formulas for the (normalized) mixed moments. This is the fully revised second edition, incorportating the many insightful comments of nine conscientious NON-anonymous referees listed under the authors' names. This article is exclusively published in the on-line journal "Personal Journal of Shalosh B. Ekhad and …
This note contains two results on the distribution of crossing numbers and nesting numbers in permutations of type B. More precisely, we prove a Bn- analogue of the symmetric distribution of crossings and nestings of permutations due to Corteel (Adv. in Appl. Math., 38(2)(2007), 149-163) as well as the sym- metric distribution of k-crossings and k-nestings of permutations due to Burrill et al. (DMTCS proc. AN, (2010), 461-468).
Alternating sign matrices and totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions are equinumerous sets of objects for which no explicit bijection is known. In this paper, we identify a subset of totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions corresponding to permutations by giving a statistic-preserving bijection to permutation matrices, which are a subset of alternating sign matrices. We use this bijection to define a new partial order on permutations, and prove this new poset contains both the Tamari lattice and the Catalan distributive lattice as subposets. We also study a new par…
We continue our study of a new boundedness condition for affine permutations, motivated by the fruitful concept of periodic boundary conditions in statistical physics. We focus on bounded affine permutations of size $N$ that avoid the monotone decreasing pattern of fixed size $m$. We prove that the number of such permutations is asymptotically equal to $(m-1)^{2N} N^{(m-2)/2}$ times an explicit constant as $N\to\infty$. For instance, the number of bounded affine permutations of size $N$ that avoid $321$ is asymptotically equal to $4^N (N/4π)^{1/2}$. We also prove a permuton-like result for the…
Generalizing the notion of a vexillary permutation, we introduce a filtration of S_infinity by the number of Schur function terms in the Stanley symmetric function, with the kth filtration level called the k-vexillary permutations. We show that for each k, the k-vexillary permutations are characterized by avoiding a finite set of patterns. A key step is the construction of a Specht series, in the sense of James and Peel, for the Specht module associated to the diagram of a permutation. As a corollary, we prove a conjecture of Liu on diagram varieties for certain classes of permutation diagrams…
We consider random permutations which are spherically symmetric with respect to a metric on the symmetric group $S_n$ and are consistent as $n$ varies. The extreme infinitely spherically symmetric permutation-valued processes are identified for the Hamming, Kendall-tau and Caley metrics. The proofs in all three cases are based on a unified approach through stochastic monotonicity.
It is shown that the maximum number of patterns that can occur in a permutation of length $n$ is asymptotically $2^n$. This significantly improves a previous result of Coleman.
We present exponential generating function analogues to two classical identities involving the ordinary generating function of the complete homogeneous symmetric functions. After a suitable specialization the new identities reduce to identities involving the first and second order Eulerian polynomials. The study of these identities led us to consider a family of symmetric functions associated with a class of permutations introduced by Gessel and Stanley, known in the literature as Stirling permutations. In particular, we define certain type statistics on Stirling permutations that refine the s…
We prove conjectures of the third author [L. Tevlin, Proc. FPSAC'07, Tianjin] on two new bases of noncommutative symmetric functions: the transition matrices from the ribbon basis have nonnegative integral coefficients. This is done by means of two composition-valued statistics on permutations and packed words, which generalize the combinatorics of Genocchi numbers.
We present (bi-)symmetric generating functions for the joint distributions of Euler-Stirling statistics on permutations, including the number of descents ($\mathsf{des}$), inverse descents ($\mathsf{ides}$), the number of left-to-right maxima ($\mathsf{lmax}$), the number of right-to-left maxima ($\mathsf{rmax}$) and the number of left-to-right minima ($\mathsf{lmin}$). We also show how they recover the classical symmetric generating function of permutations due to Carlitz, Roselle and Scoville (1966). Our proofs exploit three different recursive constructions of inversion sequences, bijection…
An involution is a permutation that is its own inverse. Given a permutation $σ$ of $[n],$ let $\mathbf{N}_{n}(σ)$ denote the number of ways to write $σ$ as a product of two involutions of $[n].$ If we endow the symmetric groups $S_{n}$ with uniform probability measures, then the random variables ${\mathbf N}_{n}$ are asymptotically lognormal. The proof is based upon the observation that, for most permutations $σ$, $\mathbf{N}_{n}(σ)$ can be well approximated by $\mathbf{B}_{n}(σ),$ the product of the cycle lengths of $σ$. Asymptotic lognormality of $\mathbf{N}_{n}$ can therefore be deduced fro…
We generalize the work of Fomin, Greene, Reiner, and Shimozono on balanced labellings in two directions: (1) we define the diagrams of affine permutations and the balanced labellings on them; (2) we define the set-valued version of the balanced labellings. We show that the column-strict balanced labellings on the diagram of an affine permutation yield the affine Stanley symmetric function defined by Lam, and that the column-strict set-valued balanced labellings yield the affine stable Grothendieck polynomial of Lam. Moreover, once we impose suitable flag conditions, the flagged column-strict s…
This is a note for constructing fundamental invariants and computing the Hilbert series of the invariant subalgebras of tensor products of polynomial rings under the action by a direct product of symmetric groups. Our computation relies on Schur functions bringing together several identities of combinatorial generating functions including that of plane partitions.
We prove a convolution formula for the conjugacy classes in symmetric groups conjectured by the second author. A combinatorial interpretation of coefficients is provided. As a main tool we introduce new semigroup of partial permutations. We describe its structure, representations, and characters. We also discuss filtrations on the subalgebra of invariants in the semigroup algebra.
Let $G$ be a permutation group acting on a finite set $Ω$ of cardinality $n$. The number of orbits of the induced action of $G$ on the set $Ω_m$ of all size $m$ subsets of $Ω$ satisfies the trivial inequalities $|Ω_m|/|G|\leq |Ω_m/G|\leq |Ω_m|$. The paper offers improvements of the upper bound in terms of the minimal degree of $G$ or the minimal degree of some its subset with a small complement. Applications include asymptotic enumeration of point configurations in an affine space over a finite field, unlabeled graphs and hypergraphs. Finally, with references to known results of permutation gr…
This paper builds on two covering Hopf algebras of the Hopf algebra QSym of quasi-symmetric functions, with linear bases parameterized by compositions. One is the Malvenuto-Reutenauer Hopf algebra SSym of permutations, mapped onto QSym by taking descents of permutations. The other one is the recently introduced Hopf algebra RQSym of weak quasi-symmetric functions, mapped onto QSym by extracting compositions from weak compositions. We extend these two surjective Hopf algebra homomorphisms into a commutative diagram by introducing a Hopf algebra HSym, linearly spanned by signed permutations from…
Although the conjugacy classes of the general linear group are known, it is not obvious (from the canonic form of matrices) that two permutation matrices are similar if and only if they are conjugate as permutations in the symmetric group, i.e. that conjugacy classes of S_n do not unite under the natural representation. We prove this fact, and give its application to the enumeration of fixed points under a natural action of S_n x S_n. We also consider the permutation representations of S_n which arise from the action of S_n on k-tuples, and classify which of them unite conjugacy classes and wh…
We use the theory of symmetric functions to enumerate various classes of alternating permutations w of {1,2,...,n}. These classes include the following: (1) both w and w^{-1} are alternating, (2) w has certain special shapes, such as (m-1,m-2,...,1), under the RSK algorithm, (3) w has a specified cycle type, and (4) w has a specified number of fixed points. We also enumerate alternating permutations of a multiset. Most of our formulas are umbral expressions where after expanding the expression in powers of a variable E, E^k is interpreted as the Euler number E_k. As a small corollary, we obtai…
We consider several generalizations of the classical $γ$-positivity of Eulerian polynomials (and their derangement analogues) using generating functions and combinatorial theory of continued fractions. For the symmetric group, we prove an expansion formula for inversions and excedances as well as a similar expansion for derangements. We also prove the $γ$-positivity for Eulerian polynomials for derangements of type $B$. More general expansion formulae are also given for Eulerian polynomials for $r$-colored derangements. Our results answer and generalize several recent open problems in the lite…
Descents in permutations or words are defined from the relative position of two consecutive letters. We investigate a statistic involving patterns of k consecutive letters, and show that it leads to Hopf algebras generalizing noncommutative symmetric functions and quasi-symmetric functions.
The following long-standing problem in combinatorics was first posed in 1993 by Gessel and Reutenauer. For which multisubsets $B$ of the symmetric group $\fS_n$ is the quasisymmetric function $$Q(B) = \sum_{π\in B}F_{\Des(π), n}$$ a symmetric function? Here $\Des(π)$ is the descent set of $π$ and $F_{\Des(π), n}$ is Gessel's fundamental basis for the vector space of quasisymmetric functions. The purpose of this paper is to provide a useful characterization of these multisets. Using this characterization we prove a conjecture of Elizalde and Roichman. Two other corollaries are also given. The f…
We consider a random permutation drawn from the set of permutations of length $n$ that avoid some given set of patterns of length 3. We show that the number of occurrences of another pattern $σ$ has a limit distribution, after suitable scaling. In several cases, the number is asymptotically normal; this contrasts to the cases of permutations avoiding a single pattern of length 3 studied in earlier papers.
We study statistical properties of the random variables $X_σ(π)$, the number of occurrences of the pattern $σ$ in the permutation $π$. We present two contrasting approaches to this problem: traditional probability theory and the ``less traditional'' computational approach. Through the perspective of the first one, we prove that for any pair of patterns $σ$ and $τ$, the random variables $X_σ$ and $X_τ$ are jointly asymptotically normal (when the permutation is chosen from $S_{n}$). From the other perspective, we develop algorithms that can show asymptotic normality and joint asymptotic normalit…
We study several aspects of the Möbius function, $μ[σ,π]$, on the poset of permutations under the pattern containment order. First, we consider cases where the lower bound of the poset is indecomposable. We show that $μ[σ,π]$ can be computed by considering just the indecomposable permutations contained in the upper bound. We apply this to the case where the upper bound is an increasing oscillation, and give a method for computing the value of the Möbius function that only involves evaluating simple inequalities. We then consider conditions on an interval which guarantee that the value of the M…
In this paper, we define a set which has a finite group action and is generated by a finite color set, a set which has a finite group action, and a subset of the set of non negative integers. we state its properties to apply one of solution of the following two problems, respectively. First, we calculate the generating function of the character of symmetric powers of permutation representation associated with a set which has a finite group action. Second, we calculate the number of primitive colorings on some objects of polyhedrons. It is a generalization of the calculation of the number of pr…
In this paper we give an affirmative answer to a conjecture proposed by Danny Neftin, that is, if the commutator of two permutations has at least n-4 fixed points where two permutations are in degree n symmetric group, then there exists a permutation in this symmetric inverting both of them.
When dealing with symmetry properties of mathematical objects, one of the fundamental questions is to determine their full automorphism group. In this paper this question is considered in the context of even/odd permutations dichotomy. More precisely: when is it that existence of automorphisms acting as even permutations on the vertex set of a graph, called {\em even automorphisms}, forces existence of automorphisms that act as odd permutations, called {\em odd automorphisms}. As a first step towards resolving the above question, a complete information on existence of odd automorphisms in cubi…
In this paper, we investigate permutation rotation-symmetric (shift-invariant) vectorial Boolean functions on $n$ bits that are liftings from Boolean functions on $k$ bits, for $k\leq n$. These functions generalize the well-known map used in the current Keccak hash function, which is generated via the Boolean function on $3$ variables, $x_1+(x_2+1)x_3$. We provide some general constructions, and also study the affine equivalence between rotation-symmetric S-boxes and describe the corresponding relationship between the Boolean function they are associated with.
We prove that the number of permutations avoiding an arbitrary consecutive pattern of length m is asymptotically largest when the avoided pattern is 12...m, and smallest when the avoided pattern is 12...(m-2)m(m-1). This settles a conjecture of the author and Noy from 2001, as well as another recent conjecture of Nakamura. We also show that among non-overlapping patterns of length m, the pattern 134...m2 is the one for which the number of permutations avoiding it is asymptotically largest.
We prove that permutations with few inversions exhibit a local-global dichotomy in the following sense. Suppose ${\boldsymbolσ}$ is a permutation chosen uniformly at random from the set of all permutations of $[n]$ with exactly $m=m(n)\ll n^2$ inversions. If $i<j$ are chosen uniformly at random from $[n]$, then ${\boldsymbolσ}(i)<{\boldsymbolσ}(j)$ asymptotically almost surely. However, if $i$ and $j$ are chosen so that $j-i\ll m/n$, and $m \ll n^2/\log^2 n$, then $\lim_{n\to\infty}\mathbb{P}\big[{\boldsymbolσ}(i)<{\boldsymbolσ}(j)\big]=\frac{1}{2}$. Moreover, if $k=k(n)\ll \sqrt{m/n}$, then t…
We investigate the number of permutations that occur in random labellings of trees. This is a generalisation of the number of subpermutations occurring in a random permutation. It also generalises some recent results on the number of inversions in randomly labelled trees. We consider complete binary trees as well as random split trees a large class of random trees of logarithmic height introduced by Devroye in 1998. Split trees consist of nodes (bags) which can contain balls and are generated by a random trickle down process of balls through the nodes. For complete binary trees we show that as…
The classes of tree permutations and forest permutations were defined by Acan and Hitczenko (2016). We study random permutations of a given length from these classes, and in particular the number of occurrences of a fixed pattern in one of these random permutations. The main results show that the distributions of these numbers are asymptotically normal. The proof uses representations of random tree and forest permutations that enable us to express the number of occurrences of a pattern by a type of $U$-statistics; we then use general limit theorems for the latter.
The second author had previously obtained explicit generating functions for moments of characteristic polynomials of permutation matrices (n points). In this paper, we generalize many aspects of this situation. We introduce random shifts of the eigenvalues of the permutation matrices, in two different ways: independently or not for each subset of eigenvalues associated to the same cycle. We also consider vastly more general functions than the characteristic polynomial of a permutation matrix, by first finding an equivalent definition in terms of cycle-type of the permutation. We consider other…
The number of peaks of a random permutation is known to be asymptotically normal. We give a new proof of this and prove a central limit theorem for the distribution of peaks in a fixed conjugacy class of the symmetric group. Our technique is to apply ``analytic combinatorics'' to study a complicated but exact generating function for peaks in a given conjugacy class.
Recently, Bóna and Smith defined strong pattern avoidance, saying that a permutation $π$ strongly avoids a pattern $τ$ if $π$ and $π^2$ both avoid $τ$. They conjectured that for every positive integer $k$, there is a permutation in $S_{k^3}$ that strongly avoids $123\cdots (k+1)$. We use the Robinson--Schensted--Knuth correspondence to settle this conjecture, showing that the number of such permutations is at least $k^{k^3/2+O(k^3/\log k)}$ and at most $k^{2k^3+O(k^3/\log k)}$. We enumerate $231$-avoiding permutations of order $3$, and we give two further enumerative results concerning strong …
We study the symmetric function and polynomial combinatorial invariants of Hopf algebras of permutations, posets and graphs. We investigate their properties and the relations among them. In particular, we show that the chromatic symmetric function and many other invariants have a property we call positively $h$-alternating. This property of positively $h$-alternating leads to Schur positivity and $e$-positivity when applying the operator $\nabla$ at $q=1$. We conclude by showing that the invariants we consider can be expressed as scheduling problems.
We present some Markovian approaches to prove universality results for some functions on the symmetric group. Some of those statistics are already studied in [Kammoun, 2018, 2020] but not the general case. We prove, in particular, that the number of occurrences of a vincular patterns satisfies a CLT for conjugation invariant random permutations with few cycles and we improve the results already known for the longest increasing subsequence. The second approach is a suggestion of a generalization to other random permutations and other sets having a similar structure than the symmetric group.
The derangement polynomial for the symmetric group enumerates derangements by the number of excedances. It can be interpreted as the local $h$-polynomial, in the sense of Stanley, of the barycentric subdivision of the simplex. Motivated by this interpretation, we define a derangement polynomial for the even-signed permutation group. The coefficients of this polynomial are nonnegative, symmetric and unimodal. We show that they enumerate derangements in the even-signed permutation group according to a notion of excedance, which is analogous to the one introduced by Brenti for signed permutations…
The signed permutation modules are a simultaneous generalization of the ordinary permutation modules and the twisted permutation modules of the symmetric group. In a recent paper Dave Benson and Peter Symonds defined a new invariant $γ_G(M)$ for a finite dimensional module $M$ of a finite group $G$ which attempts to quantify how close a module is to being projective. In this paper, we determine this invariant for all the signed permutation modules of the symmetric group using tools from representation theory and combinatorics.
Permutation codes have received a great attention due to various applications. For different applications, one needs permutation codes under different metrics. The generalized Cayley metric was introduced by Chee and Vu [4] and this metric includes several other metrics as special cases. However, the generalized Cayley metric is not easily computable in general. Therefore the block permutation metric was introduced by Yang et al. [22] as the generalized Cayley metric and the block permutation metric have the same magnitude. However, the block permutation metric lacks the symmetry property whic…
The density, denoted by $κ(n,r)$, of permutations having no cycles of length less than $r+1$ in a symmetric group $\mathrm{S}_n$ is explored. New asymptotic formulas for $κ(n,r)$ are obtained using the saddle-point method when $5\leq r< n$ and $n\to\infty$.
In [Boltje,Hartmann: Permutation resolutions for Specht modules, J. Algebraic Combin. 34 (2011), 141-162], a chain complex was constructed in a combinatorial way which conjecturally is a resolution of the (dual of the) integral Specht module for the symmetric group in terms of permutation modules. In this paper we extend the definition of the chain complex to the integral Iwahori Hecke algebra and prove the same partial exactness results that were proved in the symmetric group case. A complete proof of the exactness conjecture in the symmetric group case was recently given by Santana and Yudin…
The distribution of descents in fixed conjugacy classes of $S_n$ has been studied, and it is shown that its moments have interesting properties. Fulman proved that the descent numbers of permutations in conjugacy classes with large cycles are asymptotically normal, and Kim proved that the descent numbers of fixed point free involutions are also asymptotically normal. In this paper, we generalize these results to prove a central limit theorem for descent numbers of permutations in any conjugacy class of $S_n$.
We define a map $ν$ between the symmetric group $S_n$ and the set of pairs of Dyck paths of semilength $n$. We show that the map $ν$ is injective when restricted to the set of 1234-avoiding permutations and characterize the image of this map.
