We give a new proof for a theorem of Ehrhart regarding the quasi-polynomiality of the function that counts the number of integer points in the integral dilates of a rational polytope. The proof involves a geometric bijection, inclusion-exclusion, and recurrence relations, and we also prove Ehrhart reciprocity using these methods.
Recently, Chapoton found a $q$-analog of Ehrhart polynomials, which are polynomials in $x$ whose coefficients are rational functions in $q$. Chapoton conjectured the shape of the Newton polygon of the numerator of the $q$-Ehrhart polynomial of an order polytope. In this paper, we prove Chapoton's conjecture.
A rational polytope is the convex hull of a finite set of points in $\R^d$ with rational coordinates. Given a rational polytope $P \subseteq \R^d$, Ehrhart proved that, for $t\in\Z_{\ge 0}$, the function $#(tP \cap \Z^d)$ agrees with a quasi-polynomial $L_P(t)$, called the Ehrhart quasi-polynomial. The Ehrhart quasi-polynomial can be regarded as a discrete version of the volume of a polytope. We use that analogy to derive a new proof of Ehrhart's theorem. This proof also allows us to quickly prove two other facts about Ehrhart quasi-polynomials: McMullen's theorem about the periodicity of the …
We consider the Ehrhart $h^*$-vector for the hypersimplex. It is well-known that the sum of the $h_i^*$ is the normalized volume which equals an Eulerian numbers. The main result is a proof of a conjecture by R. Stanley which gives an interpretation of the $h^*_i$ coefficients in terms of descents and excedances. Our proof is geometric using a careful book-keeping of a shelling of a unimodular triangulation. We generalize this result to other closely related polytopes.
The Baldoni--Vergne volume and Ehrhart polynomial formulas for flow polytopes are significant in at least two ways. On one hand, these formulas are in terms of Kostant partition functions, connecting flow polytopes to this classical vector partition function fundamental in representation theory. On the other hand the Ehrhart polynomials can be read off from the volume functions of flow polytopes. The latter is remarkable since the leading term of the Ehrhart polynomial of an integer polytope is its volume! Baldoni and Vergne proved these formulas via residues. To reveal the geometry of these f…
This note provide bijective proofs of two combinatorial identities involving generalized Catalan number $C_{m,5}(n)={m\over 5n+m}{5n+m\choose n}$ recently proposed by Sun.
We give bijective proofs of Monk's rule for Schubert and double Schubert polynomials computed with bumpless pipe dreams. In particular, they specialize to bijective proofs of transition and cotransition formulas of Schubert and double Schubert polynomials, which can be used to establish bijections with ordinary pipe dreams.
We provide bijective proofs of two classic identities that are very simple to prove using generating functions, but surprisingly difficult to prove combinatorially. The problem of finding a bijective proof for the first identity was first raised in the 1930s. The second, more involved identity takes the first one a step further.
In this paper, we study the graph polynomial that counts spanning rooted forests f_g of a given graph. This polynomial has a remarkable reciprocity property. We give a new bijective proof for this theorem which has Prufer coding as a special case.
Alternating sign matrices are known to be equinumerous with descending plane partitions, totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions and alternating sign triangles, but no bijective proof for any of these equivalences has been found so far. In this paper we provide the first bijective proof of the operator formula for monotone triangles, which has been the main tool for several non-combinatorial proofs of such equivalences. In this proof, signed sets and sijections (signed bijections) play a fundamental role.
We present a ``method'' for bijective proofs for determinant identities, which is based on translating determinants to Schur functions by the Jacobi--Trudi identity. We illustrate this ``method'' by generalizing a bijective construction (which was first used by Goulden) to a class of Schur function identities, from which we shall obtain bijective proofs for Dodgson's condensation formula, Plücker relations and a recent identity of the second author.
It is well known that the derangement numbers $d_n$, which count permutations of length $n$ with no fixed points, satisfy the recurrence $d_n=nd_{n-1}+(-1)^n$ for $n\ge1$. Combinatorial proofs of this formula have been given by Remmel, Wilf, Désarménien and Benjamin--Ornstein. Here we present yet another, arguably simpler, bijective proof.
In this paper, we present a direct bijective proof of the hook-length formula for standard immaculate tableaux, which arose in the study of non-commutative symmetric functions. Our proof is along the spirit of Novelli, Pak and Stoyanovskii's combinatorial proof of the hook-length formula for standard Young tableaux.
Stankova and West proved in 2002 that the patterns 231 and 312 are shape-Wilf-equivalent. Their proof was nonbijective and fairly complicated. We give a new characterization of 231 and 312 avoiding full rook placements and use this to give a simple bijective proof of the shape-Wilf- equivalence.
We first give a bijective proof of Gould's identity in the model of binary words. Then we deduce Rothe's identity from Gould's identity again by a bijection, which also leads to a double-sum extension of the $q$-Chu-Vandermonde formula.
We give a bijective proof of Macdonald's reduced word identity using pipe dreams and Little's bumping algorithm. This proof extends to a principal specialization due to Fomin and Stanley. Such a proof has been sought for over 20 years. Our bijective tools also allow us to solve a problem posed by Fomin and Kirillov from 1997 using work of Wachs, Lenart, Serrano and Stump. These results extend earlier work by the third author on a Markov process for reduced words of the longest permutation.
Recently, Ehrenborg and Van Willenburg defined a class of bipartite graphs that correspond naturally to Ferrers diagrams, and proved several results about them. We give bijective proofs for the (already known) expressions for the number of spanning trees and (where applicable) Hamiltonian paths of these graphs. Their paper can be found at http://www.ms.uky.edu/~jrge/Papers/Ferrers_graphs.pdf .
This paper gives bijective proofs of some novel coinversion identities first discovered by Ayyer, Mandelshtam, and Martin (arxiv:2011.06117) as part of their proof of a new combinatorial formula for the modified Macdonald polynomials $\tilde{H}_μ$. Those authors used intricate algebraic manipulations of $q$-binomial coefficients to prove these identities, which imply the existence of certain bijections needed in their proof that their formula satisfies the axioms characterizing $\tilde{H}_μ$. They posed the open problem of constructing such bijections explicitly. We resolve that problem here.
Amdeberhan conjectured that the number of $(s,s+2)$-core partitions with distinct parts for an odd integer $s$ is $2^{s-1}$. This conjecture was first proved by Yan, Qin, Jin and Zhou, then subsequently by Zaleski and Zeilberger. Since the formula for the number of such core partitions is so simple one can hope for a bijective proof. We give the first direct bijective proof of this fact by establishing a bijection between the set of $(s, s+2)$-core partitions with distinct parts and a set of lattice paths.
Recently, Naruse presented a beautiful cancellation-free hook-length formula for skew shapes. The formula involves a sum over objects called excited diagrams, and the term corresponding to each excited diagram has hook lengths in the denominator, like the classical hook-length formula due to Frame, Robinson and Thrall. In this paper, we present a simple bijection that proves an equivalent recursive version of Naruse's result, in the same way that the celebrated hook-walk proof due to Green, Nijenhuis and Wilf gives a bijective (or probabilistic) proof of the hook-length formula for ordinary sh…
We give a combinatorial proof of the factorization formula of modified Macdonald polynomials when the parameter t is specialized at a primitive root of unity. Our proof is restricted to the special case of partitions with 2 columns. We mainly use the combinatorial interpretation of Haglund, Haiman and Loehr giving the expansion of the modified Macdonald polynomials on the monomial basis.
This paper is the second in a series of planned papers which provide first bijective proofs of alternating sign matrix results. Based on the main result from the first paper, we construct a bijective proof of the enumeration formula for alternating sign matrices and of the fact that alternating sign matrices are equinumerous with descending plane partitions. We are also able to refine these bijections by including the position of the unique $1$ in the top row of the matrix. Our constructions rely on signed sets and related notions. The starting point for these constructions were known ``comput…
Using the model of words, we give bijective proofs of Gould-Mohanty's and Raney-Mohanty's identities, which are respectively multivariable generalizations of Gould's identity $$\sum_{k=0}^{n}{x-kz\choose k}{y+kz\choose n-k}= \sum_{k=0}^{n}{x+ε-kz\choose k}{y-ε+kz\choose n-k} $$ and Rothe's identity $$ \sum_{k=0}^{n}\frac{x}{x-kz}{x-kz\choose k}{y+kz\choose n-k}= {x+y\choose n}. $$
Another bijective proof of Stanley's hook-content formula for the generating function for semistandard tableaux of a given shape is given that does not involve the involution principle of Garsia and Milne. It is the result of a merge of the modified jeu de taquin idea from the author's previous bijective proof (``An involution principle-free bijective proof of Stanley's hook-content formula", Discrete Math. Theoret. Computer Science, to appear) and the Novelli-Pak-Stoyanovskii bijection (Discrete Math. Theoret. Computer Science 1 (1997), 53-67) for the hook formula for standard Young tableaux …
Babson and Steingr\'ımsson introduced generalized permutation patterns and showed that most of the Mahonian statistics in the literature can be expressed by the combination of generalized pattern functions. Particularly, they defined a new Mahonian statistic in terms of generalized pattern functions, which is denoted $stat$. Given a permutation $π$, let $des(π)$ denote the descent number of $π$ and $maj(π)$ denote the major index of $π$. Babson and Steingr\'ımsson conjectured that $(des,stat)$ and $(des,maj)$ are equidistributed on $S_n$. Foata and Zeilberger settled this conjecture using q-en…
Irreducible characters in the symmetric group are of special interest in combinatorics. They can be expressed either combinatorially with ribbon tableaux, or algebraically with contents. In this paper, these two expressions are related in a combinatorial way. We first introduce a fine structure in the famous jeu de taquin called "trace forest", with which we are able to count certain types of ribbon tableaux, leading to a simple bijective proof of a character evaluation formula in terms of contents that dates back to Frobenius (1901). Inspired by this proof, we give an inductive scheme that gi…
Gurevich, Pyatov and Saponov recently stated an expansion for the product of two Schur functions and gave a proof based on the Pluecker relations. Here we show that this identity is in fact a special case of a quite general Schur function identity, which was stated and proved in a paper by Fulmek and Kleber, where it was used to prove bijectively Dodgsons condensation formula and the Pluecker relations, but was not paid further attention: So we take the opportunity to make obvious the range of applicability of this identity by giving concrete examples, accompanied by many graphical illustratio…
In this paper we provide a bijective proof of a theorem of Garsia and Gessel describing the generating function of the major index over the set of all permutations of [n]={1,...,n} which are shuffles of given disjoint ordered sequences whose union is [n]. Two special cases are singled out: If the single element j is inserted into any permutation P of the remaining elements of [n], then the theorem states that inserting j into P increases the major index of P by some element of {0,1,...,n-1}, the increase determined uniquely by the index of insertion. We provide a direct proof of this fact usin…
In this paper we answer a question posed by R. Stanley in his collection of Bijection Proof Problems (Problem 240). We present a bijective proof for the enumeration of walks of length $k$ a chess rook can move along on an $m\times n$ board starting and ending on the same square.
For $σ\in S_n$, let $D(σ) = \{i : σ_{i} > σ_{i+1}\}$ denote the descent set of $σ$. The length of the permutation is the number of inversions, denoted by $inv(σ) = \big | \{(i,j) : i<j, σ_i > σ_j\} \big |$. Define an unusual quadratic statisitic by $baj(σ) = \sum_{i \in D(σ)} i (n-i)$. We present here a bijective proof of the identity $\sum_{{σ\in S_n} \atop {σ(n) = k}} q^{baj(σ) - inv(σ)} = \prod_{i=1}^{n-1} {1-q^{i (n-i)} \over {1-q^i}}$ where $k$ is a fixed integer.
We give a bijective proof of an identity relating primed shifted gl(n)-standard tableaux to the product of a gl(n) character in the form of a Schur function and a product of sums of x and y terms. This result generalises a number of well--known results due to Robbins and Rumsey, Chapman, Tokuyama, Okada and Macdonald. An analogous result is then obtained in the case of primed shifted sp(2n)-standard tableaux which are bijectively related to the product of a t-deformed sp(2n) character and another x and y product. All results are also interpreted in terms of alternating sign matrix identities, …
The chromatic polynomial and its generalization, the chromatic symmetric function, are two important graph invariants. Celebrated theorems of Birkhoff, Whitney, and Stanley show how both objects can be expressed in three different ways: as sums over all spanning subgraphs, as sums over spanning subgraphs with no broken circuits, and in terms of acyclic orientations with compatible colorings. We establish all six of these expressions bijectively. In fact, we do this with only two bijections, as the proofs in the symmetric function setting are obtained using the same bijections as in the polynom…
Baryshnikov and Romik derived the combinatorial identities for the numbers of the $m$-strip tableaux. This generalized the classical André's theorem for the number of up-down permutations. They asked for a bijective proof for the enumeration of $3$-strip tableaux. In this paper we will provide such a bijective proof. First we count the $3$-strip tableaux by decomposition. Secondly we will apply this "decomposition" idea on the up-down permutations and down-up permutations to enumerate the $3$-strip tableaux bijectively.
We obtain a new motivated proof of the reciprocity law for Dedekind sums by computing the constant coefficient of the Ehrhart polynomial for a rectangular triangle in two ways. On the one hand, the constant term is the Euler characteristic, and on the other hand it is given by a cotangent Laurent expansion.
Recently Mansour and Shattuck studied $(k,a)$-paths and gave formulas that relate the total number of humps (peaks) in all $(k,a)$-paths to the number of super $(k,a)$-paths. These results generalize earlier results of Regev on Dyck paths and Motzkin paths. Their proofs are based on generating functions and they asked for bijective proofs for their results. In this paper we first give bijective proofs of Mansour and Shattuck's results, then we extend our study to $(n,m)$-Dyck paths. We give a bijection that relates the total number of peaks in all $(n,m)$-Dyck paths to certain free $(n,m)$-pat…
A few years ago, Naruse presented a beautiful cancellation-free hook-length formula for skew shapes, both straight and shifted. The formula involves a sum over objects called \emph{excited diagrams}, and the term corresponding to each excited diagram has hook lengths in the denominator, like the classical hook-length formula due to Frame, Robinson and Thrall. Recently, the formula for skew straight shapes was proved via a simple bumping algorithm. The aim of this paper is to extend this result to skew shifted shapes. Since straight skew shapes are special cases of skew shifted shapes, this is …
We present a bijective proof of the hook-length formula for shifted standard tableaux of a fixed shape based on a modified jeu de taquin and the ideas of the bijective proof of the hook-length formula for ordinary standard tableaux by Novelli, Pak and Stoyanovskii. In their proof Novelli, Pak and Stoyanovskii define a bijection between arbitrary fillings of the Ferrers diagram with the integers $1,2,...,n$ and pairs of standard tableaux and hook tabloids. In our shifted version of their algorithm the map from the set of arbitrary fillings of the shifted Ferrers diagram onto the set of shifted …
Loehr and Warrington introduced partitional statistics $\mbox{ctot}_{\frac{q}{p}}(D)$ and $\mbox{midd}_{\frac{q}{p}}(D)$ and provided formulas for these statistics in terms of the boundary graph of the Young diagram $D$. In this paper we give a bijective proof of Loehr-Warrington's formulas using the following simple combinatorial observation: given a Young diagram $D$ and two numbers $a$ and $l,$ the number of boxes in $D$ with the arm length $a$ and the leg length $l$ is one less than the number of boxes with the same properties in the complement to $D.$ Here the complement is taken inside t…
Recently, Mansour and Shattuck related the total number of humps in all of the $(k, a)$-paths of order $n$ to the number of super $(k, a)$-paths, which generalized previous results concerning the cases when $k = 1$ and $a = 1$ or $a = \infty$. They also derived a relation on the total number of peaks in all of the $(k, a)$-paths of order $n$ and the number of super $(k, a)$-paths, and asked for bijective proofs. In this paper, we will give bijective proofs of these two relations.
We consider pairs of a set-valued column-strict tableau and a reverse plane partition of the same shape. We introduce algortithms for them, which implies a bijective proof for the finite sum Cauchy identity for Grothendieck polynomials and dual Grothendieck polynomials.
This paper highlights three known identities, each of which involves sums over alternating sign matrices. While proofs of all three are known, the only known derivations are as corollaries of difficult results. The simplicity and natural combinatorial interpretation of these identities, however, suggest that there should be direct, bijective proofs.
In a delightful article, Richard Stanley derived, algebraically, the surprisingly simple formula, 3 times 7 to the power n-1, for the sum of the cubes of the n-th row of Stern's diatomic array. In this note, we find an elegant bijective proof of this surprising fact, that explains it and gives insight. The novelty is that this gorgeous bijection was discovered by a computer (SBE), with minimal guidance by a human (DZ). This debunks the conventional wisdom, held by some human supremacists, that computers can only compute, but they can't give insight
We prove a formula for the number of permutations in $S_n$ such that their first $n-k$ entries are increasing and their longest increasing subsequence has length $n-k$. This formula first appeared as a consequence of character polynomial calculations in recent work of Adriano Garsia and Alain Goupil. We give two `elementary' bijective proofs of this result and of its $q$-analogue, one proof using the RSK correspondence and one only permutations.
Kirchhoff's matrix-tree theorem states that the number of spanning trees of a graph G is equal to the value of the determinant of the reduced Laplacian of $G$. We outline an efficient bijective proof of this theorem, by studying a canonical finite abelian group attached to $G$ whose order is equal to the value of same matrix determinant. More specifically, we show how one can efficiently compute a bijection between the group elements and the spanning trees of the graph. The main ingredient for computing the bijection is an efficient algorithm for finding the unique $G$-parking function (reduce…
In a recent paper, Dousse introduced a refinement of Siladić's theorem on partitions, where parts occur in two primary and three secondary colors. Her proof used the method of weighted words and $q$-difference equations. The purpose of this paper is to give a bijective proof of a generalization of Dousse's theorem from two primary colors to an arbitrary number of primary colors.
McDuff and Schlenk determined when a four-dimensional ellipsoid can be symplectically embedded into a ball, and found that part of the answer is given by an infinite "Fibonacci staircase." Similarly, Frenkel and Müller determined when a four-dimensional ellipsoid can be symplectically embedded into the ellipsoid E(1,2) and found that part of the answer is given by a "Pell staircase." ECH capacities give an obstruction to symplectically embedding one four-dimensional ellipsoid into another, and McDuff showed that this obstruction is sharp. We use this result to give new proofs of the staircases…
The scissors congruence conjecture for the unimodular group is an analogue of Hilbert's third problem, for the equidecomposability of polytopes. Liu and Osserman studied the Ehrhart quasi-polynomials of polytopes naturally associated to graphs whose vertices have degree one or three. In this paper, we prove the scissors congruence conjecture, posed by Haase and McAllister, for this class of polytopes. The key ingredient in the proofs is the nearest neighbor interchange on graphs and a naturally arising piecewise unimodular transformation.
Define a permutation to be any sequence of distinct positive integers. Given two permutations p and s on disjoint underlying sets, we denote by p sh s the set of shuffles of p and s (the set of all permutations obtained by interleaving the two permutations). A permutation statistic is a function St whose domain is the set of permutations such that St(p) only depends on the relative order of the elements of p. A permutation statistic is shuffle compatible if the distribution of St on p sh s depends only on St(p) and St(s) and their lengths rather than on the individual permutations themselves. …
In this series of articles we study connections between combinatorics of multidimensional generalizations of Cauchy identity and continuous objects such as multidimensional Brownian motions and Brownian bridges. In Part I of the series we present a bijective proof of multidimensional generalizations of the Cauchy identity. Our bijection uses oriented planar trees equipped with some linear orders.
In his lost notebook, Ramanujan listed 5 identities related to the false theta function $$f(q)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty (-1)^nq^{n(n+1)/2}.$$ A new combinatorial interpretation and proof of one of these identities is given. The methods of the proof allow for new multivariate generalizations of this identity. Additionally, the same technique can be used to obtained a combinatorial interpretation of another one of the identities.
Recent works of Andrews--Newman and Hopkins--Sellers unveil an interesting relation between two partition statistics, the crank and the mex. They state that, for a positive integer $n$, there are as many partitions of $n$ with non-negative crank as partitions of $n$ with odd mex. In this paper, we give a bijective proof of a generalization of this identity provided by Hopkins, Sellers, and Stanton. Our method uses an alternative definition of the Durfee decomposition, whose combinatorial link to the crank was recently studied by Hopkins, Sellers, and Yee.