We find an explicit combinatorial interpretation of the coefficients of Kerov character polynomials which express the value of normalized irreducible characters of the symmetric groups S(n) in terms of free cumulants R_2,R_3,... of the corresponding Young diagram. Our interpretation is based on counting certain factorizations of a given permutation.
Kerov's polynomials give irreducible character values in term of the free cumulants of the associated Young diagram. We prove in this article a positivity result on their coefficients, which extends a conjecture of S. Kerov. Our method, through decomposition of maps, gives a description of the coefficients of the k-th Kerov's polynomials using permutations in S(k). We also obtain explicit formulas or combinatorial interpretations for some coefficients. In particular, we are able to compute the subdominant term for character values on any fixed permutation (it was known for cycles).
We prove a formula expressing the Kerov polynomial $Σ_k$ as a weighted sum over the lattice of noncrossing partitions of the set $\{1,...,k+1\}$. In particular, such a formula is related to a partial order $\mirr$ on the Lehner's irreducible noncrossing partitions which can be described in terms of left-to-right minima and maxima, descents and excedances of permutations. This provides a translation of the formula in terms of the Cayley graph of the symmetric group $\frak{S}_k$ and allows us to recover the coefficients of $Σ_k$ by means of the posets $P_k$ and $Q_k$ of pattern-avoiding permutat…
We give a compact expression for the number of factorizations of any permutation into a minimal number of transpositions of the form $(1 i)$. Our result generalizes earlier work of Pak in which substantial restrictions were placed on the permutation being factored.
Two factorizations of a permutation into products of cycles are equivalent if one can be obtained from the other by repeatedly interchanging adjacent disjoint factors. This paper studies the enumeration of equivalence classes under this relation. We obtain closed form expressions for generating series of inequivalent minimal transitive factorizations of permutations having up to three cycles, and also of permutations with four cycles when factors are restricted to be transpositions. Our derivations rely on a new correspondence between inequivalent factorizations and acyclic alternating digraph…
In this paper, we look at the number of factorizations of a given permutation into star transpositions. In particular, we give a natural explanation of a hidden symmetry, answering a question of I.P. Goulden and D.M. Jackson. We also have a new proof of their explicit formula. Another result is the normalized class expansion of some central elements of the symmetric group algebra introduced by P. Biane. To obtain this results, we use natural analogs of Jucys-Murphy elements in the algebra of partial permutations of V. Ivanov and S. Kerov. We investigate their properties and use a formula of A.…
We give two combinatorial proofs of Goulden and Jackson's formula for the number of minimal transitive factorizations of a permutation when the permutation has two cycles. We use the recent result of Goulden, Nica, and Oancea on the number of maximal chains of annular noncrossing partitions of type $B$.
We consider the problem of factoring permutations as a product of special types of transpositions, namely, those transpositions involving two positions with bounded distances. In particular, we investigate the minimum number, $δ$, such that every permutation can be factored into no more than $δ$ special transpositions. This study is related to sorting algorithms, Cayley graphs, and genomics.
We introduce a new approach to an enumerative problem closely linked with the geometry of branched coverings; that is, we study the number of ways a permutation can be decomposed into a product of a given number of 2-cycles, 3-cycles, etc. with certain minimality and transitivity conditions imposed on the factors. The method is to encode such factorizations as planar maps with certain "descent structure" and apply a new combinatorial decomposition to make their enumeration more manageable. We apply our technique to count factorizations of permutations with one or two parts, extending earlier w…
The number of minimal transitive star factorizations of a permutation was shown by Irving and Rattan to depend only on the conjugacy class of the permutation, a surprising result given that the pivot plays a very particular role in such factorizations. Here, we explain this symmetry and provide a bijection between minimal transitive star factorizations of a permutation πhaving pivot k and those having pivot k'.
We describe an approach, via Malle's permutation $Ψ$ on the set of irreducible characters $\text{Irr}(W)$, that gives a uniform derivation of the Chapuy-Stump formula for the enumeration of reflection factorizations of the Coxeter element. It also recovers its weighted generalization by delMas, Reiner, and Hameister, and further produces structural results for factorization formulas of arbitrary regular elements.
We give an account of our work on transitive factorizations of permutations. The work has had impact upon other areas of mathematics such as the enumeration of graph embeddings, random matrices, branched covers, and the moduli spaces of curves. Aspects of these seemingly unrelated areas are seen to be related in a unifying view from the perspective of algebraic combinatorics. At several points this work has intertwined with Richard Stanley's in significant ways.
A factorization of a permutation into transpositions is called "primitive" if its factors are weakly ordered. We discuss the problem of enumerating primitive factorizations of permutations, and its place in the hierarchy of previously studied factorization problems. Several formulas enumerating minimal primitive and possibly non-minimal primitive factorizations are presented, and interesting connections with Jucys-Murphy elements, symmetric group characters, and matrix models are described.
Using the diagrammatic approach to integrals over Gaussian random matrices, we find a representation for polynomial Lie group integrals as infinite sums over certain maps on surfaces. The maps involved satisfy a specific condition: they have some marked vertices, and no closed walks that avoid these vertices. We also formulate our results in terms of permutations, arriving at new kinds of factorization problems.
The $(p,q,n)$-dipole problem is a map enumeration problem, arising in perturbative Yang-Mills theory, in which the parameters $p$ and $q$, at each vertex, specify the number of edges separating of two distinguished edges. Combinatorially, it is notable for being a permutation factorization problem which does not lie in the centre of $\mathbb{C}[\mathfrak{S}_n]$, rendering the problem inaccessible through the character theoretic methods often employed to study such problems. This paper gives a solution to this problem on all orientable surfaces when $q=n-1$, which is a combinatorially significa…
It is well known that any nonsingular M-matrix admits an LU factorization into M-matrices (with L and U lower and upper triangular respectively) and any singular M-matrix is permutation similar to an M-matrix which admits an LU factorization into M-matrices. Varga and Cai establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a singular M-matrix (without permutation) to allow an LU factorization with L nonsingular. We generalize these results in two directions. First, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an LU factorization of a singular M-matrix where L and U are both p…
We study the factorizations of the permutation $(1,2,...,n)$ into $k$ factors of given cycle types. Using representation theory, Jackson obtained for each $k$ an elegant formula for counting these factorizations according to the number of cycles of each factor. In the cases $k=2,3$ Schaeffer and Vassilieva gave a combinatorial proof of Jackson's formula, and Morales and Vassilieva obtained more refined formulas exhibiting a surprising symmetry property. These counting results are indicative of a rich combinatorial theory which has remained elusive to this point, and it is the goal of this arti…
We extend Stanley's work on alternating permutations with extremal number of fixed points in two directions: first, alternating permutations are replaced by permutations with a prescribed descent set; second, instead of simply counting permutations we study their generating polynomials by number of excedances. Several techniques are used: Desarmenien's desarrangement combinatorics, Gessel's hook-factorization and the analytical properties of two new permutation statistics "DEZ" and "lec". Explicit formulas for the maximal case are derived by using symmetric function tools.
This paper is dedicated to the factorizations of the symmetric group. Introducing a new bijection for partitioned 3-cacti, we derive an el- egant formula for the number of factorizations of a long cycle into a product of three permutations. As the most salient aspect, our construction provides the first purely combinatorial computation of this number.
We consider a new type of Hurwitz number, the number of ordered transitive factorizations of an arbitrary permutation into d-cycles. In this paper, we focus on the special case d = 3. The minimal number of transitive factorizations of any permutation into 3-cycles has been worked out by David, Goulden and Jackson. Also, such factorizations for transpositions, the case d = 2, have been considered by Crescimanno and Taylor. Goulden and Jackson have proved the differential equation for the generating series of simple Hurwitz numbers. Based on their results, we use W-operator to prove a differenti…
We give a new expression for the number of factorizations of a full cycle into an ordered product of permutations of specified cycle types. This is done through purely algebraic means, extending work of Biane. We deduce from our result a formula of Poulalhon and Schaeffer that was previously derived through an intricate combinatorial argument.
A celebrated analogy between prime factorizations of integers and cycle decompositions of permutations is explored here. Asymptotic formulas characterizing semismooth numbers (possessing at most several large factors) carry over to random permutations. We offer a survey of practical methods for computing relevant probabilities of a bivariate or trivariate flavor.
The central object of study is a formal power series that we call the content series, a symmetric function involving an arbitrary underlying formal power series $f$ in the contents of the cells in a partition. In previous work we have shown that the content series satisfies the KP equations. The main result of this paper is a new partial differential equation for which the content series is the unique solution, subject to a simple initial condition. This equation is expressed in terms of families of operators that we call $\mathcal{U}$ and $\mathcal{D}$ operators, whose action on the Schur sym…
For the elements of a Coxeter group, we present a statistic called depth, defined in terms of factorizations of the elements into products of reflections. Depth is bounded above by length and below by the average of length and reflection length. In this article, we focus on the case of the symmetric group, where we show that depth is equal to sum_i max{w(i)-i, 0}. We characterize those permutations for which depth equals length: these are the 321-avoiding permutations (and hence are enumerated by the Catalan numbers). We also characterize those permutations for which depth equals reflection le…
We evaluate combinatorially certain connection coefficients of the symmetric group that count the number of factorizations of a long cycle as a product of three permutations. Such factorizations admit an important topological interpretation in terms of unicellular constellations on orientable surfaces. Algebraic computation of these coefficients was first done by Jackson using irreducible characters of the symmetric group. However, bijective computations of these coefficients are so far limited to very special cases. Thanks to a new bijection that refines the work of Schaeffer and Vassilieva, …
Results of Morse and Schilling show that the set of increasing factorizations of reduced words for a permutation is naturally a crystal for the general linear Lie algebra. Hiroshima has recently constructed two superalgebra analogues of such crystals. Specifically, Hiroshima has shown that the sets of increasing factorizations of involution words and fpf-involution words for a self-inverse permutation are each crystals for the queer Lie superalgebra. In this paper, we prove that these crystals are normal and identify their connected components. To accomplish this, we study two insertion algori…
The problem of counting ramified covers of a Riemann surface up to homeomorphism was proposed by Hurwitz in the late 1800's. This problem translates combinatorially into factoring a permutation of specified cycle type, with certain conditions on the cycle types of the factors, such as minimality and transitivity. Goulden and Jackson have given a proof for the number of minimal, transitive factorizations of a permutation into transpositions. This proof involves a partial differential equation for the generating series, called the Join-Cut equation. Recently, Bousquet-Mélou and Schaeffer have fo…
Recently, Lazar and Wachs (arXiv:1910.07651) showed that the (median) Genocchi numbers play a fundamental role in the study of the homogenized Linial arrangement and obtained two new permutation models (called D-permutations and E-permutations) for (median) Genocchi numbers. They further conjecture that the distributions of cycle numbers over the two models are equal. In a follow-up, Eu et al. (arXiv:2103.09130) further proved the gamma-positivity of the descent polynomials of even-odd descent permutations, which are in bijection with E-permutations by Foata's fundamental transformation. This …
This is a study on pattern Hopf algebras in combinatorial structures. We introduce the notion of combinatorial presheaf, by adapting the algebraic framework of species to the study of substructures in combinatorics. Afterwards, we consider functions that count the number of patterns of objects and endow the linear span of these functions with a product and a coproduct. In this way, any well behaved family of combinatorial objects that admits a notion of substructure generates a Hopf algebra, and this association is functorial. For example, the Hopf algebra on permutations studied by Vargas in …
In symmetric groups, studies of permutation factorizations or triples of permutations satisfying certain conditions have a long history. One particular interesting case is when two of the involved permutations are long cycles, for which many surprisingly simple formulas have been obtained. Here we combinatorially enumerate the pairs of long cycles whose product has a given cycle-type and separates certain elements, extending several lines of studies, and we obtain general quantitative relations. As consequences, in a unified way, we recover a number of results expecting simple combinatorial pr…
We study the asymptotic behaviour of random factorizations of the $n$-cycle into transpositions of fixed genus $g>0$. They have a geometric interpretation as branched covers of the sphere and their enumeration as Hurwitz numbers was extensively studied in algebraic combinatorics and enumerative geometry. On the probabilistic side, several models and properties of permutation factorizations were studied in previous works, in particular minimal factorizations of cycles into transpositions (which corresponds to the case $g=0$ of this work). Using the representation of factorizations via unicellul…
This article is devoted to the computation of Jack connection coefficients, a generalization of the connection coefficients of two classical commutative subalgebras of the group algebra of the symmetric group: the class algebra and the double coset algebra. The connection coefficients of these two algebraic structures are of significant interest in the study of Schur and zonal polynomials as well as the irreducible characters of the symmetric group and the zonal spherical functions. Furthermore they play an important role in combinatorics as they give the number of factorizations of a permutat…
Constellations and hypermaps generalize combinatorial maps, i.e. embedding of graphs in a surface, in terms of factorization of permutations. In this paper, we extend a result of Jackson and Visentin (1990) stating an enumerative relation between quadrangulations and bipartite quadrangulations. We show a similar relation between hypermaps and constellations by using a result of Littlewood on factorization of characters. A combinatorial proof of Littlewood's result is also given. Furthermore, we show that coefficients in our relation are all positive integers, hinting possibility of a combinato…
We obtain estimates on the number $|\mathcal{A}_{\boldsymbolλ}|$ of elements on a linear family $\mathcal{A}$ of monic polynomials of $\mathbb{F}_q[T]$ of degree $n$ having factorization pattern $\boldsymbolλ:=1^{λ_1}2^{λ_2}\cdots n^{λ_n}$. We show that $|\mathcal{A}_{\boldsymbolλ}|= \mathcal{T}(\boldsymbolλ)\,q^{n-m}+\mathcal{O}(q^{n-m-{1}/{2}})$, where $\mathcal{T}(\boldsymbolλ)$ is the proportion of elements of the symmetric group of $n$ elements with cycle pattern $\boldsymbolλ$ and $m$ is the codimension of $\mathcal{A}$. Furthermore, if the family $\mathcal{A}$ under consideration is "sp…
The classical Hurwitz numbers count the fixed-length transitive transposition factorizations of a permutation, with a remarkable product formula for the case of minimum length (genus $0$). We study the analogue of these numbers for reflection groups with the following generalization of transitivity: say that a reflection factorization of an element in a reflection group $W$ is full if the factors generate the whole group $W$. We compute the generating function for full factorizations of arbitrary length for an arbitrary element in a group in the combinatorial family $G(m, p, n)$ of complex ref…
In this article we consider the cycle structure of compositions of pairs of involutions in the symmetric group S_n chosen uniformly at random. These can be modeled as modified 2-regular graphs, giving rise to exponential generating functions. A composition of two random involutions in S_n typically has about n^(1/2) cycles, and the cycles are characteristically of length n^(1/2). Compositions of two random fixed-point-free involutions, on the other hand, typically have about log n cycles and are closely related to permutations with all cycle lengths even. The number of factorizations of a rand…
