We study $ν$-Schröder paths, which are Schröder paths which stay weakly above a given lattice path $ν$. Some classical bijective and enumerative results are extended to the $ν$-setting, including the relationship between small and large Schröder paths. We introduce two posets of $ν$-Schröder objects, namely $ν$-Schröder paths and trees, and show that they are isomorphic to the face poset of the $ν$-associahedron $A_ν$ introduced by Ceballos, Padrol and Sarmiento. A consequence of our results is that the $i$-dimensional faces of $A_ν$ are indexed by $ν$-Schröder paths with $i$ diagonal steps, and we obtain a closed-form expression for these Schröder numbers in the special case when $ν$ is a `rational' lattice path. Using our new description of the face poset of $A_ν$, we apply discrete Morse theory to show that $A_ν$ is contractible. This yields one of two proofs presented for the fact that the Euler characteristic of $A_ν$ is one. A second proof of this is obtained via a formula for the $ν$-Narayana polynomial in terms of $ν$-Schröder numbers.
We study Schroder paths drawn in a (m,n) rectangle, for any positive integers m and n. We get explicit enumeration formulas, closely linked to those for the corresponding (m,n)-Dyck paths. Moreover we study a Schroder version of (m,n)-parking functions, and associated (q,t)-analogs.
A recent pair of papers of Armstrong, Loehr, and Warrington and Armstrong, Williams, and the author initiated the systematic study of {\em rational Catalan combinatorics} which is a generalization of Fuss-Catalan combinatorics (which is in turn a generalization of classical Catalan combinatorics). The latter paper gave two possible models for a rational analog of the associahedron which attach simplicial complexes to any pair of coprime positive integers a < b. These complexes coincide up to the Fuss-Catalan level of generality, but in general one may be a strict subcomplex of the other. Verif…
We investigate the combinatorial properties of the functional equation $ϕ[h(z)]=h(qz)$ for the conjugation of a formal diffeomorphism $ϕ$ of $\mathbb{C}$ to its linear part $z\mapsto qz$. This is done by interpreting the functional equation in terms of symmetric functions, and then lifting it to noncommutative symmetric functions. We describe explicitly the expansion of the solution in terms of plane trees and prove that its expression on the ribbon basis has coefficients in ${\mathbb N}[q]$ after clearing the denominators $(q)_n$. We show that the conjugacy equation can be lifted to a quadrat…
The Quantum Symmetric Simple Exclusion Process (QSSEP) is a model of quantum particles hopping on a finite interval and satisfying the exclusion principle. Recently Bernard and Jin have studied the fluctuations of the invariant measure for this process, when the number of sites goes to infinity. These fluctuations are encoded into polynomials, for which they have given equations and proved that these equations determine the polynomials completely. In this paper, I give an explicit combinatorial formula for these polynomials, in terms of Schröder trees. I also show that, quite surprisingly, the…
We continue the study of the nonkissing complex that was introduced by Petersen, Pylyavskyy, and Speyer and was studied lattice-theoretically by the second author. We introduce a theory of Grid-Catalan combinatorics, given the initial data of a nonkissing complex, and show how this theory parallels the well-known Coxeter-Catalan combinatorics. In particular, we present analogues of Chapoton's F-triangle, H-triangle, and M-triangle and give combinatorial, lattice-theoretic, and geometric interpretations of the objects defining these. In our Grid-Catalan setting, we prove that Chapoton's F-trian…
An increasing tableau is a semistandard tableau with strictly increasing rows and columns. It is well known that the Catalan numbers enumerate both rectangular standard Young tableaux of two rows and also Dyck paths. We generalize this to a bijection between rectangular 2-row increasing tableaux and small Schröder paths. We demonstrate relations between the jeu de taquin for increasing tableaux developed by H. Thomas and A. Yong and the combinatorics of tropical frieze patterns. We then use this jeu de taquin to present new instances of the cyclic sieving phenomenon of V. Reiner, D. Stanton, a…
Realisations of associahedra with linearly non-isomorphic normal fans can be obtained by alteration of the right-hand sides of the facet-defining inequalities from a classical permutahedron. These polytopes can be expressed as Minkowski sums and differences of dilated faces of a standard simplex as described by Ardila, Benedetti & Doker (2010). The coefficients $y_I$ of such a Minkowski decomposition can be computed by Möbius inversion if tight right-hand sides $z_I$ are known not just for the facet-defining inequalities of the associahedron but also for all inequalities of the permutahedron t…
We give a geometric realization of the polyhedra governed by the structure of associative algebras with co-inner products, or more precisely, governed by directed planar trees. Our explicit realization of these polyhedra, which include the associahedra in a special case, shows in particular that these polyhedra are homeomorphic to balls. We also calculate the number of vertices of the lowest generalized associahedra, giving appropriate generalizations of the Catalan numbers.
We study some distributive lattices arising in the combinatorics of lattice paths. In particular, for the Dyck, Motzkin and Schroder lattices we describe the spectrum and we determine explicitly the Euler characteristic in terms of natural parameters of lattice paths.
In biology, a phylogenetic tree is a tool to represent the evolutionary relationship between species. Unfortunately, the classical Schröder tree model is not adapted to take into account the chronology between the branching nodes. In particular, it does not answer the question: how many different phylogenetic stories lead to the creation of n species and what is the average time to get there? In this paper, we enrich this model in two distinct ways in order to obtain two ranked tree models for phylogenetics, i.e. models coding chronology. For that purpose, we first develop a model of (strongly…
The n-th Delannoy number and the n-th Schröder number given by $D_n=\sum_{k=0}^n\binom{n}{k}\binom{n+k}{k}$ and $S_n=\sum_{k=0}^n\binom{n}{k}\binom{n+k}{k}/(k+1)$ respectively arise naturally from enumerative combinatorics. Let p be an odd prime. We mainly show that $$\sum_{k=1}^{p-1}D_k/k^2=2(-1/p)E_{p-3} (mod p)$$ and $$\sum_{k=1}^{p-1}S_k/m^k=(m^2-6m+1)/(2m)*(1-((m^2-6m+1)/p) (mod p),$$ where (-) is the Legendre symbol, E_0,E_1,E_2,... are Euler numbers and m is any integer not divisible by p. We also conjecture that $\sum_{k=1}^{p-1}D_k^2/k^2=-2q_p(2)^2 (mod p)$, where $q_p(2)=(2^{p-1}-1)/…
Wilson loop diagrams are an important tool in studying scattering amplitudes of SYM $N=4$ theory and are known by previous work to be associated to positroids. We characterize the conditions under which two Wilson loop diagrams give the same positroid, prove that an important subclass of subdiagrams (exact subdiagrams) correspond to uniform matroids, and enumerate the number of different Wilson loop diagrams that correspond to each positroid cell. We also give a correspondence between those positroids which can arise from Wilson loop diagrams and directions in associahedra.
The Tamari lattice, defined on Catalan objects such as binary trees and Dyck paths, is a well-studied poset in combinatorics. It is thus natural to try to extend it to other families of lattice paths. In this article, we fathom such a possibility by defining and studying an analogy of the Tamari lattice on Motzkin paths. While our generalization is not a lattice, each of its connected components is isomorphic to an interval in the classical Tamari lattice. With this structural result, we proceed to the enumeration of components and intervals in the poset of Motzkin paths we defined. We also ex…
Various lattice path models are reviewed. The enumeration is done using generating functions. A few bijective considerations are woven in as well. The kernel method is often used. Computer algebra was an essential tool. Some results are new, some have appeared before. The lattice path models we treated, are: Hoppy's walks, the combinatorics of sequence A002212 in \cite{OEIS} (skew Dyck paths, Schröder paths, Hex-trees, decorated ordered trees, multi-edge trees, etc.) Weighted unary-binary trees also occur, and we could improve on our old paper on Horton-Strahler numbers \cite{FlPr86}, by using…
In this paper we find and explore the correspondence between quivers, torus knots, and combinatorics of counting paths. Our first result pertains to quiver representation theory -- we find explicit formulae for classical generating functions and Donaldson-Thomas invariants of an arbitrary symmetric quiver. We then focus on quivers corresponding to $(r,s)$ torus knots and show that their classical generating functions, in the extremal limit and framing $rs$, are generating functions of lattice paths under the line of the slope $r/s$. Generating functions of such paths satisfy extremal A-polynom…
