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 Möbius function is zero. In particular, we show that if a permutation $π$ contains two intervals of length 2, which are not order-isomorphic to one another, then $μ[1,π] = 0$. This allows us to prove that the proportion of permutations of length $n$ with principal Möbius function equal to zero is asymptotically bounded below by $(1-1/e)^2 \ge 0.3995$. This is the first result determining the value of $μ[1,π]$ for an asymptotically positive proportion of permutations $π$.
Following this, we use ''2413-balloon'' permutations to show that the growth of the principal Möbius function on the permutation poset is exponential. This improves on previous work, which has shown that the growth is at least polynomial.
We then generalise 2413-balloon permutations, and find a recursion for the value of the principal Möbius function of these generalisations.
Every word has a shape determined by its image under the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence. We show that when a word w contains a separable (i.e., 3142- and 2413-avoiding) permutation σ as a pattern, the shape of w contains the shape of σ. As an application, we exhibit lower bounds for the lengths of supersequences of sets containing separable permutations.
The study of pattern containment and avoidance for linear permutations is a well-established area of enumerative combinatorics. A cyclic permutation is the set of all rotations of a linear permutation. Callan initiated the study of permutation avoidance in cyclic permutations and characterized the avoidance classes for all single permutations of length 4. We continue this work. In particular, we establish a cyclic variant of the Erdos-Szekeres Theorem that any linear permutation of length mn+1 must contain either the increasing pattern of length m+1 or the decreasing pattern of length n+1. We …
We present some results on the proportion of permutations of length $n$ containing certain mesh patterns as $n$ grows large, and give exact enumeration results in some cases. In particular, we focus on mesh patterns where entire rows and columns are shaded. We prove some general results which apply to mesh patterns of any length, and then consider mesh patterns of length four. An important consequence of these results is to show that the proportion of permutations containing a mesh pattern can take a wide range of values between $0$ and $1$.
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…
We show that the principal specialization of the Schubert polynomial at $w$ is bounded below by $1+p_{132}(w)+p_{1432}(w)$ where $p_u(w)$ is the number of occurrences of the pattern $u$ in $w$, strengthening a previous result by A. Weigandt. We then make a conjecture relating the principal specialization of Schubert polynomials to pattern containment. Finally, we characterize permutations $w$ whose RC-graphs are connected by simple ladder moves via pattern avoidance.
A monotone grid class is a permutation class (i.e., a downset of permutations under the containment order) defined by local monotonicity conditions. We give a simplified proof of a result of Murphy and Vatter that monotone grid classes of forests are partially well-ordered.
A king-non-attacking permutation is a permutation $π\in S_n$ such that $|π(i)-π(i-1)|\neq 1$ for each $i \in \{2,\dots,n\}$. We investigate the structure of the poset of these permutations under the containment relation, and also provide some results on its Möbius function.
For classes O of structures on finite linear orders (permutations, ordered graphs etc.) endowed with containment order cont (containment of permutations, subgraph relation etc.), we investigate restrictions on the function f(n) counting objects with size n in a lower ideal in (O, cont). We present a framework of edge P-colored complete graphs (C(P), cont) which includes many of these situations, and we prove for it two such restrictions (jumps in growth): f(n) is eventually constant or f(n) >= n for all n>0; f(n)<n^c for all n>0 for a constant c>0 or f(n) >= F_n for all n>0, F_n being the Fibo…
Inspired by work of McKay, Morse, and Wilf, we give an exact count of the involutions in S_n which contain a given permutation τin S_k as a subsequence; this number depends on the patterns of the first j values of τfor 1<=j<=k. We then use this to define a partition of S_k, analogous to Wilf-classes in the study of pattern avoidance, and examine properties of this equivalence. In the process, we show that a permutation τ_1...τ_k is layered iff, for 1<=j<=k, the pattern of τ_1...τ_j is an involution. We also obtain a result of Sagan and Stanley counting the standard Young tableaux of size $n$ w…
Packing density is a permutation occurrence statistic which describes the maximal number of permutations of a given type that can occur in another permutation. In this article we focus on containment of sets of permutations. Although this question has been tangentially considered previously, this is the first systematic study of it. We find the packing density for various special sets of permutations and study permutation and pattern co-occurrence.
In their study of cyclic pattern containment, Domagalski et al. conjecture differential equations for the generating functions of circular permutations avoiding consecutive patterns of length 3. In this note, we prove and significantly generalize these conjectures. We show that, for every consecutive pattern $σ$ beginning with 1, the bivariate generating function counting occurrences of $σ$ in circular permutations can be obtained from the generating function counting occurrences of $σ$ in (linear) permutations. This includes all the patterns for which the latter generating function is known.
The concept of pattern avoidance respectively containment in permutations can be extended to permutations on multisets in a straightforward way. In this note we present a direct proof of the already known fact that the well-known Stanley-Wilf Conjecture, stating that the number of permutations avoiding a given pattern does not grow faster than exponentially, also holds for permutations on multisets.
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 establish a phase transition for permutation classes (downsets of permutations under the permutation containment order): there is an algebraic number $κ$, approximately 2.20557, for which there are only countably many permutation classes of growth rate (Stanley-Wilf limit) less than $κ$ but uncountably many permutation classes of growth rate $κ$, answering a question of Klazar. We go on to completely characterize the possible sub-$κ$ growth rates of permutation classes, answering a question of Kaiser and Klazar. Central to our proofs are the concepts of generalized grid classes (introduced …
We develop the technique of reduced word manipulation to give a range of results concerning reduced words and permutations more generally. We prove a broad connection between pattern containment and reduced words, which specializes to our previous work for vexillary permutations. We also analyze general tilings of Elnitsky's polygon, and demonstrate that these are closely related to the patterns in a permutation. Building on previous work for commutation classes, we show that reduced word enumeration is monotonically increasing with respect to pattern containment. Finally, we give several appl…
Billey, Jockusch, and Stanley characterized 321-avoiding permutations by a property of their reduced decompositions. This paper generalizes that result with a detailed study of permutations via their reduced decompositions and the notion of pattern containment. These techniques are used to prove a new characterization of vexillary permutations in terms of their principal dual order ideals in a particular poset. Additionally, the combined frameworks yield several new results about the commutation classes of a permutation. In particular, these describe structural aspects of the corresponding gra…
The set of all permutations, ordered by pattern containment, is a poset. We give a formula for the Möbius function of intervals $[1,π]$ in this poset, for any permutation $π$ with at most one descent. We compute the Möbius function as a function of the number and positions of pairs of consecutive letters in $π$ that are consecutive in value. As a result of this we show that the Möbius function is unbounded on the poset of all permutations. We show that the Möbius function is zero on any interval $[1,π]$ where $π$ has a triple of consecutive letters whose values are consecutive and monotone. We…
The set of all permutations, ordered by pattern containment, is a poset. We present an order isomorphism from the poset of permutations with a fixed number of descents to a certain poset of words with subword order. We use this bijection to show that intervals of permutations with a fixed number of descents are shellable, and we present a formula for the Möbius function of these intervals. We present an alternative proof for a result on the Möbius function of intervals $[1,π]$ such that $π$ has exactly one descent. We prove that if $π$ has exactly one descent and avoids 456123 and 356124, then…
It is known that the set of permutations, under the pattern containment ordering, is not a partial well-order. Characterizing the partially well-ordered closed sets (equivalently: down sets or ideals) in this poset remains a wide-open problem. Given a 0/+-1 matrix M, we define a closed set of permutations called the profile class of M. These sets are generalizations of sets considered by Atkinson, Murphy, and Ruskuc. We show that the profile class of M is partially well-ordered if and only if a related graph is a forest. Related to the antichains we construct to prove one of the directions of …
We study the values of the Möbius function $μ$ of intervals in the containment poset of permutations. We construct a sequence of permutations $π_n$ of size $2n-2$ for which $μ(1,π_n)$ is given by a polynomial in $n$ of degree 7. This construction provides the fastest known growth of $|μ(1,π)|$ in terms of $|π|$, improving a previous quadratic bound by Smith. Our approach is based on a formula expressing the Möbius function of an arbitrary permutation interval $[α,β]$ in terms of the number of embeddings of the elements of the interval into $β$.
In this work of thesis we introduce and study a new family of sorting devices, which we call pattern-avoiding machines. They consist of two stacks in series, equipped with a greedy procedure. On both stacks we impose a static constraint in terms of pattern containment: reading the content from top to bottom, the first stack is not allowed to contain occurrences of a given pattern $σ$, whereas the second one is not allowed to contain occurrences of $21$. By analyzing the behavior of pattern-avoiding machines, we aim to gain a better understanding of the problem of sorting permutations with two …
The circular peak set of a permutation $σ$ is the set $\{σ(i)\mid σ(i-1)<σ(i)>σ(i+1)\}$. Let $\mathcal{P}_n$ be the set of all the subset $S\subseteq [n]$ such that there exists a permutation $σ$ which has the circular set $S$. We can make the set $\mathcal{P}_n$ into a poset $\mathscr{P}_n$ by defining $S\preceq T$ if $S\subseteq T$ as sets. In this paper, we prove that the poset $\mathscr{P}_n$ is a simplicial complex on the vertex set $[3,n]$. We study the $f$-vector, the $f$-polynomial, the reduced Euler characteristic, the M$\ddot{o}$bius function, the $h$-vector and the $h$-polynomial of…
We consider pattern containment and avoidance with a very tight definition that was used first by Riordan more than 60 years ago. Using this definition, we prove the monotone pattern is easier to avoid than almost any other pattern of the same length. We also show that with this definition, almost all patterns of length $k$ are avoided by the same number of permutations of length $n$. The corresponding statements are not known to be true for more relaxed definitions of pattern containment. This is the first time we know of that expectations are used to compare numbers of permutations avoiding …
We give a recursive formula for the Moebius function of an interval $[σ,π]$ in the poset of permutations ordered by pattern containment in the case where $π$ is a decomposable permutation, that is, consists of two blocks where the first one contains all the letters 1, 2, ..., k for some k. This leads to many special cases of more explicit formulas. It also gives rise to a computationally efficient formula for the Moebius function in the case where $σ$ and $π$ are separable permutations. A permutation is separable if it can be generated from the permutation 1 by successive sums and skew sums or…
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.
An occurrence of a consecutive permutation pattern $p$ in a permutation $π$ is a segment of consecutive letters of $π$ whose values appear in the same order of size as the letters in $p$. The set of all permutations forms a poset with respect to such pattern containment. We compute the Möbius function of intervals in this poset, providing what may be called a complete solution to the problem. For most intervals our results give an immediate answer to the question. In the remaining cases, we give a polynomial time algorithm to compute the Möbius function. In particular, we show that the Möbius …
A $k$-universal permutation, or $k$-superpermutation, is a permutation that contains all permutations of length $k$ as patterns. The problem of finding the minimum length of a $k$-superpermutation has recently received significant attention in the field of permutation patterns. One can ask analogous questions for other classes of objects. In this paper, we study $k$-supertrees. For each $d\geq 2$, we focus on two types of rooted plane trees called $d$-ary plane trees and $[d]$-trees. Motivated by recent developments in the literature, we consider "contiguous" and "noncontiguous" notions of pat…
We present a two term formula for the Möbius function of intervals in the poset of all permutations, ordered by pattern containment. The first term in this formula is the number of so called normal occurrences of one permutation in another. Our definition of normal occurrences is similar to those that have appeared in several variations in the literature on the Möbius function of this and other posets, but simpler than most of them. The second term in the formula is complicated, but we conjecture that it equals zero for a significant proportion of intervals. We present some cases where the sec…
In this thesis, we consider the problem of characterizing and enumerating sets of polyominoes described in terms of some constraints, defined either by convexity or by pattern containment. We are interested in a well known subclass of convex polyominoes, the k-convex polyominoes for which the enumeration according to the semi-perimeter is known only for k=1,2. We obtain, from a recursive decomposition, the generating function of the class of k-convex parallelogram polyominoes, which turns out to be rational. Noting that this generating function can be expressed in terms of the Fibonacci polyno…
A permutation $σ=[σ_1,\dots,σ_n] \in S_n$ is called a {\em cylindrical king permutation} if $ |σ_{i+1}-σ_{i}|>1$ for each $1\leq i \leq n-1$ and $|σ_1-σ_n|>1$. The name comes from the the way one can see these permutations as describing locations of $n$ kings on a chessboard of order $n\times n$ in such a way that (each row and each column contains exactly one king and) no two kings are attacking each other, with the additional condition that a king can move off a certain row and reappear at the beginning of that row. In a recent paper, we dealt with the more general set of 'king permutations'…
We introduce the notions of Schröder shape and of Schröder tableau, which provide some kind of analogs of the classical notions of Young shape and Young tableau. We investigate some properties of the partial order given by containment of Schröder shapes. Then we propose an algorithm which is the natural analog of the well known RS correspondence for Young tableaux, and we characterize those permutations whose insertion tableaux have some special shapes. The last part of the article relates the notion of Schröder tableau with those of interval order and of weak containment (and strong avoidance…
A permutation p is realized by the shift on N symbols if there is an infinite word on an N-letter alphabet whose successive left shifts by one position are lexicographically in the same relative order as p. The set of realized permutations is closed under consecutive pattern containment. Permutations that cannot be realized are called forbidden patterns. It was shown in [Amigo, Elizalde, Kennel, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 115 (2008) 485-504] that the shortest forbidden patterns of the shift on N symbols have length N+2. In this paper we give a characterization of the set of permutations that are…
The set of all permutations, ordered by pattern containment, forms a poset. This paper presents the first explicit major results on the topology of intervals in this poset. We show that almost all (open) intervals in this poset have a disconnected subinterval and are thus not shellable. Nevertheless, there seem to be large classes of intervals that are shellable and thus have the homotopy type of a wedge of spheres. We prove this to be the case for all intervals of layered permutations that have no disconnected subintervals of rank 3 or more. We also characterize in a simple way those interval…
We introduce two partially ordered sets, $P^A_n$ and $P^B_n$, of the same cardinalities as the type-A and type-B noncrossing partition lattices. The ground sets of $P^A_n$ and $P^B_n$ are subsets of the symmetric and the hyperoctahedral groups, consisting of permutations which avoid certain patterns. The order relation is given by (strict) containment of the descent sets. In each case, by means of an explicit order-preserving bijection, we show that the poset of restricted permutations is an extension of the refinement order on noncrossing partitions. Several structural properties of these per…
We introduce a notion of pattern occurrence that generalizes both classical permutation patterns as well as poset containment. Many questions about pattern statistics and avoidance generalize naturally to this setting, and we focus on functional complexity problems -- particularly those that arise by constraining the order dimensions of the pattern and text posets. We show that counting the number of induced, injective occurrences among dimension 2 posets is #P-hard; enumerating the linear extensions that occur in realizers of dimension 2 posets can be done in polynomial time, while for uncons…
Ordering permutations by containment of inversion sets yields a fascinating partial order on the symmetric group: the weak order. This partial order is, among other things, a semidistributive lattice. As a consequence, every permutation has a canonical representation as a join of other permutations. Combinatorially, these canonical join representations can be modeled in terms of arc diagrams. Moreover, these arc diagrams also serve as a model to understand quotient lattices of the weak order. A particularly well-behaved quotient lattice of the weak order is the well-known Tamari lattice, which…
We introduce the notion of pattern in the context of lattice paths, and investigate it in the specific case of Dyck paths. Similarly to the case of permutations, the pattern-containment relation defines a poset structure on the set of all Dyck paths, which we call the Dyck pattern poset. Given a Dyck path P, we determine a formula for the number of Dyck paths covered by P, as well as for the number of Dyck paths covering P. We then address some typical pattern-avoidance issues, enumerating some classes of pattern-avoiding Dyck paths. Finally, we offer a conjecture concerning the asymptotic beh…
