Permutation sign under the Robinson-Schensted correspondence (Q1889894): Difference between revisions

This charming and concise paper adds to the wealth of connections between permutation statistics and the combinatorics of Young tableaux by generalising, to all permutations, a result of the author's that obtains the sign of a 321-avoiding permutation from the Robinson-Schensted correspondence. More precisely, after briefly surveying the classic literature, she proves the key lemma that an elementary Knuth transformation applied to a permutation causes a sign reversal in the recording tableau obtained from the Robinson-Schensted correspondence. From here, the author derives the main result that the sign of a permutation can be calculated from the pair of tableaux it corresponds to via the Robinson-Schensted correspondence. Finally, she uses this to prove a special case of Stanley's sign-imbalance conjecture, and to prove that there are as many odd as even permutations that are both 213- and 231-avoiding.