The problem of linear and circular permutations of n identical objects in m boxes, where a limit l is imposed on the number of objects in a box, is considered. In the linear case, where the boxes are arranged as a row, two methods of solution are described. The first uses the partition diagram that is modified with prescribed number of zeros, and the second applies a direct combinatorial approach. Subject to constraints set on the relation between n and l, results of the combinatorial approach are used to solve the problem where there are more than one type of objects. These solutions are then extended for the case of boxes comprising subgroups that are characterized by different values of l. In the circular case, where the boxes are arranged in the form of a circle, no direct combinatorial solution in close form is available. Consequently, in the latter case, the solution relies on the use of the modified partition diagram. This solution, which involves the application of multinomial permutations on a circle, is also extended to the case of two kinds of objects.
We introduce twisted permutation codes, which are frequency permutation arrays analogous to repetition permutation codes, namely, codes obtained from the repetition construction applied to a permutation code. In particular, we show that a lower bound for the minimum distance of a twisted permutation code is the minimum distance of a repetition permutation code. We give examples where this bound is tight, but more importantly, we give examples of twisted permutation codes with minimum distance strictly greater than this lower bound.
Twisted permutation codes, introduced recently by the second and third authors, are frequency permutation arrays. They are similar to repetition permutation codes, in that they are obtained by a repetition construction applied to a smaller code. It was previously shown that the minimum distance of a twisted permutation code is at least the minimum distance of a corresponding repetition permutation code, but in some instances can be larger. We construct two new infinite families of twisted permutation codes with minimum distances strictly greater than those for the corresponding repetition perm…
We consider the following novel variation on a classical avoidance problem from combinatorics on words: instead of avoiding repetitions in all factors of a word, we avoid repetitions in all factors where each individual factor is considered as a "circular word", i.e., the end of the word wraps around to the beginning. We determine the best possible avoidance exponent for alphabet size 2 and 3, and provide a lower bound for larger alphabets.
A word is called $β$-free if it has no factors of exponent greater than or equal to $β$. The repetition threshold $\mathrm{RT}(k)$ is the infimum of the set of all $β$ such that there are arbitrarily long $k$-ary $β$-free words (or equivalently, there are $k$-ary $β$-free words of every sufficiently large length, or even every length). These three equivalent definitions of the repetition threshold give rise to three natural definitions of a repetition threshold for circular words. The infimum of the set of all $β$ such that - there are arbitrarily long $k$-ary $β$-free circular words is called…
Circular permutations on {1,2,...,n} that avoid a given pattern correspond to ordinary (linear) permutations that end with n and avoid all cyclic rotations of the pattern. Three letter patterns are all but unavoidable in circular permutations and here we give explicit formulas for the number of circular permutations that avoid one four letter pattern. In the three essentially distinct cases, the counts are as follows: the Fibonacci number F_{2n-3} for the pattern 1324, 2^{n-1}-(n-1) for 1342, and 2^{n}+1-2n-{n}choose{3} for 1234.
The circular descent of a permutation $σ$ is a set $\{σ(i)\mid σ(i)>σ(i+1)\}$. In this paper, we focus on the enumerations of permutations by the circular descent set. Let $cdes_n(S)$ be the number of permutations of length $n$ which have the circular descent set $S$. We derive the explicit formula for $cdes_n(S)$. We describe a class of generating binary trees $T_k $ with weights. We find that the number of permutations in the set $CDES_n(S)$ corresponds to the weights of $T_k$. As a application of the main results in this paper, we also give the enumeration of permutation tableaux according …
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 circular peak set of a permutation $σ$ is the set $\{σ(i)\mid σ(i-1)<σ(i)>σ(i+1)\}$. In this paper, we focus on the enumeration problems for permutations by circular peak sets. Let $cp_n(S)$ denote the number of the permutations of order $n$ which have the circular peak set $S$. For the case with $|S|=0,1,2$, we derive the explicit formulas for $cp_n(S)$. We also obtain some recurrence relations for the sequence $cp_n(S)$ and give the formula for $cp_n(S)$ in the general case.
The study of pattern avoidance in linear permutations has been an active area of research for almost half a century now, starting with the work of Knuth in 1973. More recently, the question of pattern avoidance in circular permutations has gained significant attention. In 2002-03, Callan and Vella independently characterized circular permutations avoiding a single permutation of size $4$. Building on their results, Domagalski et al. studied circular pattern avoidance for multiple patterns of size $4$. In this article, our main aim is to study circular pattern avoidance of $[4,k]$-pairs, i.e., …
In this paper, we find an explicit formula for the generating function that counts the circular permutations of length n avoiding the pattern 23 4 1 whose enumeration was raised as an open problem by Rupert Li. This then completes in all cases the enumeration of circular permutations that avoid a single vincular pattern of length four containing one vinculum. To establish our results, we introduce three auxiliary arrays which when taken together refine the cardinality of the class of permutations in question. Rewriting the recurrences of these arrays in terms of generating functions leads to f…
In this note we define circular k-successions in permutations in one-line notation and count permutations that avoid substrings j(j+k) and j(j+k) (mod n). We also count circular permutations that avoid such substrings, and show that for substrings j(j+k) (mod n), the number of permutations depends on whether n is prime, and more generally, on whether n and k are relatively prime.
Given a permutation w, we show that the number of repeated letters in a reduced decomposition of w is always less than or equal to the number of 321- and 3412-patterns appearing in w. Moreover, we prove bijectively that the two quantities are equal if and only if w avoids the ten patterns 4321, 34512, 45123, 35412, 43512, 45132, 45213, 53412, 45312, and 45231.
The repetition threshold for words on $n$ letters, denoted $\mbox{RT}(n)$, is the infimum of the set of all $r$ such that there are arbitrarily long $r$-free words over $n$ letters. A repetition threshold for circular words on $n$ letters can be defined in three natural ways, which gives rise to the weak, intermediate, and strong circular repetition thresholds for $n$ letters, denoted $\mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{W}}(n)$, $\mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{I}}(n)$, and $\mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{S}}(n)$, respectively. Currie and the present authors conjectured that $\mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{I}}(n)=\mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{W}}(n)=\mbox{RT}(n…
Motivation coming from the study of affine Weyl groups, a structure of ranked poset is defined on the set of circular permutations in $S_n$ (that is, $n$-cycles). It is isomorphic to the poset of so-called admitted vectors, and to an interval in the affine symmetric group $\tilde S_n$ with the weak order. The poset is a semidistributive lattice, and the rank function, whose range is cubic in $n$, is computed by some special formula involving inversions. We prove also some links with Eulerian numbers, triangulations of an $n$-gon, and Young's lattice.
Given a permutation w, we look at the range of how often a simple reflection s_k appears in reduced decompositions of w. We compute the minimum and give a sharp upper bound on the maximum. That bound is in terms of 321- and 3412-patterns in w, specifically as they relate in value and position to k. We also characterize when that minimum and maximum are equal, refining a previous result that braid moves are equivalent to 321-patterns.
Motivated by a problem in quantum field theory, we study the up and down structure of circular and linear permutations. In particular, we count the length of the (alternating) runs of permutations by representing them as monomials and find that they can always be decomposed into so-called `atomic' permutations introduced in this work. This decomposition allows us to enumerate the (circular) permutations of a subset of the natural numbers by the length of their runs. Furthermore, we rederive, in an elementary way and using the methods developed here, a result due to Kitaev on the enumeration of…
Let $P_n^1,\dots, P_n^d$ be $n\times n$ permutation matrices drawn independently and uniformly at random, and set $S_n^d:=\sum_{\ell=1}^d P_n^\ell$. We show that if $\log^{12}n/(\log \log n)^{4} \le d=O(n)$, then the empirical spectral distribution of $S_n^d/\sqrt{d}$ converges weakly to the circular law in probability as $n \to \infty$.
We consider the problem of upper bounding the number of circular transpositions needed to sort a permutation. It is well known that any permutation can be sorted using at most $n(n-1)/2$ adjacent transpositions. We show that, if we allow all adjacent transpositions, as well as the transposition that interchanges the element in position 1 with the element in the last position, then the number of transpositions needed is at most $n^2/4$. This answers an open question posed by Feng, Chitturi and Sudborough (2010).
We derive bounds on the number of switches at an arbitrary set of positions in a circular sequence of permutations and relate them to the diameter of Multipermutohedra.
We investigate a PL topology question: which circle bundles can be triangulated over a given triangulation of the base? The question got a simple answer emphasizing the role of minimal triangulations encoded by local systems of circular permutations of vertices of the base simplices. The answer is based on an experimental fact: classical Huntington transitivity axiom for cyclic orders can be expressed as the universal binary Chern cocycle.
We prove various results about the largest exponent of a repetition in a factor of the Thue-Morse word, when that factor is considered as a circular word. Our results confirm and generalize previous results of Fitzpatrick and Aberkane & Currie.
Given a permutation $f$, we study the positroid Catalan number $C_f$ defined to be the torus-equivariant Euler characteristic of the associated open positroid variety. We introduce a class of repetition-free permutations and show that the corresponding positroid Catalan numbers count Dyck paths avoiding a convex subset of the rectangle. We show that any convex subset appears in this way. Conjecturally, the associated $q,t$-polynomials coincide with the generalized $q,t$-Catalan numbers that recently appeared in relation to the shuffle conjecture, flag Hilbert schemes, and Khovanov-Rozansky hom…
Permutation Mastermind is a version of the classical mastermind game in which the number of positions $n$ is equal to the number of colors $k$, and repetition of colors is not allowed, neither in the codeword nor in the queries. In this paper we solve the main open question from Glazik, Jäger, Schiemann and Srivastav (2021), who asked whether their bound of $O(n^{1.525})$ for the static version can be improved to $O(n \log n)$, which would be best possible. By using a simple probabilistic argument we show that this is indeed the case.
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 define and enumerate two new two-parameter permutation families, namely, placements of a maximum number of non-attacking rooks on $k$ chained-together $n\times n$ chessboards, in either a circular or linear configuration. The linear case with $k=1$ corresponds to standard permutations of $n$, and the circular case with $n=4$ and $k=6$ corresponds to a three-person chessboard. We give bijections of these rook placements to matrix form, one-line notation, and matchings on certain graphs. Finally, we define chained linear and circular alternating sign matrices, enumerate them for certain value…
We introduce and study the writhe of a permutation, a circular variant of the well-known inversion number. This simple permutation statistics has several interpretations, which lead to some interesting properties. For a permutation sampled uniformly at random, we study the asymptotics of the writhe, and obtain a non-Gaussian limit distribution. This work is motivated by the study of random knots. A model for random framed knots is described, which refines the Petaluma model. The distribution of the framing in this model is equivalent to the writhe of random permutations.
In this paper we investigate some new problems in additive combinatorics. Our problems mainly involve permutations (or circular permutations) $n$ distinct numbers (or elements of an additive abelian group) $a_1,\ldots,a_n$ with adjacent sums $a_i+a_{i+1}$ (or differences $a_i-a_{i+1}$) pairwise distinct. For an odd prime power $q=2n+1>13$ with $q\not=25$, we show that there is a circular permutation $(a_1,\ldots,a_n)$ of the elements of $S=\{a^2:\ a\in\mathbb F_q\setminus\{0\}\}$ such that $\{a_1+a_2,\ldots,a_{n-1}+a_n,a_n+a_1\}=S$, where $\mathbb F_q$ denotes the field of order $q$. For any f…
Early literature on genome rearrangement modelling views the problem of computing evolutionary distances as an inherently combinatorial one. In particular, attention was given to estimating distances using the minimum number of events required to transform one genome into another. In hindsight, this approach is analogous to early methods for inferring phylogenetic trees from DNA sequences such as maximum parsimony -- both are motivated by the principle that the true distance minimises evolutionary change, and both are effective if this principle is a true reflection of reality. Recent literatu…
