Lajos Takacs gave a somewhat formidable alternating sum formula for the number of forests of unrooted trees on $n$ labeled vertices. Here we use a weight-reversing involution on suitable tree configurations to give a combinatorial derivation of Takacs' formula.
A signed labeled forest is defined as a (plane) forest labeled by {1,2,..., n} along with minus signs associated to some vertices. Signed labeled forests can be viewed as an extension of signed permutations. We define the inversion number, the flag major index and the R-major index on signed labeled forests. They can be considered as type B analogues of the indices for labeled forests introduced by Bjorner and Wachs. The flag major index for signed labeled forests is based on the flag major index on signed permutations introduced by Adin and Roichman, whereas the R-major index for signed label…
In this brief note a straightforward combinatorial proof for an identity directly connecting rooted forests and unordered set partitions is provided. Furthermore, references that put this type of identity in the context of forest volumes and multinomial identities are given.
Björner and Wachs defined a major index for labeled plane forests and showed that it has the same distribution as the number of inversions. We define and study the distributions of a few other natural statistics on labeled forests. Specifically, we introduce the notions of bottom-to-top maxima, cyclic bottom-to-top maxima, sorting index, and cycle minima. Then we show that the pairs (inv, Bt-max), (sor, Cyc), and (maj, Cbt-max) are equidistributed. Our results extend the result of Björner and Wachs and generalize results for permutations. We also introduce analogous statistics for signed label…
The theme of this article is the algebraic combinatorics of leaf-labeled rooted binary trees and forests of such trees. The structure of a Hopf operad is defined on the vector spaces spanned by forests of leaf-labeled, rooted, binary trees. An explicit formula for the coproduct and its dual product is given, using a poset on forests.
We present an algorithmic mapping from permutations of length dn to labeled n-node d-ary trees and back again. Given such a bijection, one can interpret each of the factorials in the formula for the Catalan numbers as a count of permutations.
We consider conjugation action of symmetric group on the semigroup of all partial functions and develop a machinery to investigate character formulas and multiplicities. In particular, we determine nilpotent matrices whose orbit under symmetric group afford the sign representation. Applications to rook theory are offered.
This paper discusses the enumeration for the total number of all rooted spanning forests of the labeled complete tripartite graph. We enumerate the total number by a combinatorial decomposition.
A loop-augmented forest is a labeled rooted forest with loops on some of its roots. By exploiting an interplay between nilpotent partial functions and labeled rooted forests, we investigate the permutation action of the symmetric group on loop-augmented forests. Furthermore, we describe an extension of the Foulkes' conjecture and prove a special case. Among other important outcomes of our analysis are a complete description of the stabilizer subgroup of an idempotent in the semigroup of partial transformations and a generalization of the (Knuth-Sagan) hook length formula.
We say that an unordered rooted labeled forest avoids the pattern $π\in\mathcal{S}_n$ if the sequence obtained from the labels along the path from the root to any vertex does not contain a subsequence that is in the same relative order as $π$. We enumerate several classes of forests that avoid certain sets of permutations, including the set of unimodal forests, via bijections with set partitions with certain properties. We also define and investigate an analog of Wilf-equivalence for forests.
For every labeled forest $\mathsf{F}$ with set of vertices $[n]$ we can consider the subgroup $G$ of the symmetric group $S_n$ that is generated by all the cycles determined by all maximal paths of $\mathsf{F}$. We say that $G$ is the chain group of the forest $\mathsf{F}$. In this paper we study the relation between a forest and its chain group. In particular, we find the chain groups of the members of several families of forests. Finally, we prove that no copy of the dihedral group of cardinality $2n$ inside $S_n$ can be achieved as the chain group of any forest.
Each labeled rooted tree is associated with a hyperplane arrangement, which is free with exponents given by the depths of the vertices of this tree. The intersection lattices of these arrangements are described through posets of forests. These posets are used to define coalgebras, whose dual algebras are shown to have a simple presentation by generators and relations.
We give a short and direct proof of a remarkable identity that arises in the enumeration of labeled trees with respect to their indegree sequence, where all edges are oriented from the vertex with lower label towards the vertex with higher label. This solves a problem posed by Shin and Zeng in a recent article. We also provide a generalization of this identity that translates to a formula for the number of rooted spanning forests with given indegree sequence.
Let $A$ be a commutative $k$-algebra over a field of $k$ and $Ξ$ a linear operator defined on $A$. We define a family of $A$-valued invariants $Ψ$ for finite rooted forests by a recurrent algorithm using the operator $Ξ$ and show that the invariant $Ψ$ distinguishes rooted forests if (and only if) it distinguishes rooted trees $T$, and if (and only if) it is {\it finer} than the quantity $α(T)=|\text{Aut}(T)|$ of rooted trees $T$. We also consider the generating function $U(q)=\sum_{n=1}^\infty U_n q^n$ with $U_n =\sum_{T\in \bT_n} \frac 1{α(T)} Ψ(T)$, where $\bT_n$ is the set of rooted trees …
In 1966, Cummins introduced the "tree graph": the tree graph $\mathbf{T}(G)$ of a graph $G$ (possibly infinite) has all its spanning trees as vertices, and distinct such trees correspond to adjacent vertices if they differ in just one edge, i.e., two spanning trees $T_1$ and $T_2$ are adjacent if $T_2 = T_1 -e +f$ for some edges $e\in T_1$ and $f\notin T_1$. The tree graph of a connected graph need not be connected. To obviate this difficulty we define the "forest graph": let $G$ be a labeled graph of order $α$, finite or infinite, and let $\mathfrak{N}(G)$ be the set of all labeled maximal fo…
Recently Han obtained a general formula for the weight function corresponding to the expansion of a generating function in terms of hook lengths of binary trees. In this paper, we present formulas for k-ary trees, plane trees, plane forests, labeled trees and forests. We also find appropriate generating functions which lead to unifications of the hook length formulas due to Du and Liu, Han, Gessel and Seo, and Postnikov.
In this paper, we give a bijection between rooted labeled ordered forests with a selected subset of their leaves and the regions of the type $C$ Catalan arrangement in $\R^n$. We thus obtain a bijective proof of the well-known enumeration formula of these regions ${2^n}n! \binom{2n}{n}$.
Starting from any graph on $\{1, \ldots, n\}$, consider the Markov chain where at each time-step a uniformly chosen vertex is disconnected from all of its neighbors and reconnected to another uniformly chosen vertex. This Markov chain has a stationary distribution whose support is the set of non-empty forests on $\{1, \ldots, n\}$. The random forest corresponding to this stationary distribution has interesting connections with the uniform rooted labeled tree and the uniform attachment tree. We fully characterize its degree distribution, the distribution of its number of trees, and the limit di…
We consider the process of uncovering the vertices of a random labeled tree according to their labels. First, a labeled tree with $n$ vertices is generated uniformly at random. Thereafter, the vertices are uncovered one by one, in order of their labels. With each new vertex, all edges to previously uncovered vertices are uncovered as well. In this way, one obtains a growing sequence of forests. Three particular aspects of this process are studied in this work: first the number of edges, which we prove to converge to a stochastic process akin to a Brownian bridge after appropriate rescaling. Se…
In this paper, we construct explicitly a noncommutative symmetric (${\mathcal N}$CS) system over the Grossman-Larson Hopf algebra of labeled rooted trees. By the universal property of the ${\mathcal N}$CS system formed by the generating functions of certain noncommutative symmetric functions, we obtain a specialization of noncommutative symmetric functions by labeled rooted trees. Taking the graded duals, we also get a graded Hopf algebra homomorphism from the Connes-Kreimer Hopf algebra of labeled rooted forests to the Hopf algebra of quasi-symmetric functions. A connection of the coefficient…
We introduce the generic Lah polynomials $L_{n,k}(ϕ)$, which enumerate unordered forests of increasing ordered trees with a weight $ϕ_i$ for each vertex with $i$ children. We show that, if the weight sequence $ϕ$ is Toeplitz-totally positive, then the triangular array of generic Lah polynomials is totally positive and the sequence of row-generating polynomials $L_n(ϕ,y)$ is coefficientwise Hankel-totally positive. Upon specialization we obtain results for the Lah symmetric functions and multivariate Lah polynomials of positive and negative type. The multivariate Lah polynomials of positive typ…