Copartitions (Q6065681)

In a study of combinatorial interpretations of Watson's third-order mock theta functions, \textit{G. E. Andrews} [ibid. 27, No. 3, 519--537 (2023; Zbl 07765575)] introduced the function \(\mathcal{EO}^\ast(n)\), which denotes the number of partitions of \(n\) with all even parts smaller than all odd parts, where the only part appearing an odd number of times is the largest even part. Andrews [loc. cit.] studied many interesting properties of \(\mathcal{EO}^\ast(n)\), including that its generating function is simply \(\big(\nu(q)+\nu(-q)\big)/2\), where \(\nu(q)\) is one of Watson's third-order mock theta functions, given by \[ \nu(q)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty\dfrac{q^{n(n+1)}}{(-q;q^2)_{n+1}}, \] where we always assume that \(|q|<1\) and adopt the following notation: \[ (a;q)_n:=\prod_{j=0}^{n-1}(1-aq^j)\qquad\textrm{and}\qquad (a;q)_\infty:=\prod_{j=0}^\infty(1-aq^j). \] Some properties of \(\mathcal{EO}^\ast(n)\) were subsequently considered by \textit{S. Chern} [Afr. Mat. 30, No. 5--6, 691--695 (2019; Zbl 1438.05008); Math. Notes 110, No. 3, 454--457 (2021; Zbl 1485.11146)]. In this paper, the authors further generalize \(\mathcal{EO}^\ast(n)\) by introducing new partition-theoretic objects called copartitions. These objects reveal an inherent symmetry in partitions counted by \(\mathcal{EO}^\ast(n)\) that was not previously obvious. Let \(\textrm{cp}_{1,1,2}(n)\) denote the number of \((a,b,m)\)-copartitions of size \(n\). The authors prove that for any \(n\geq0\), \(\textrm{cp}_{1,1,2}(n)=\mathcal{EO}^\ast(2n)\). The notion of copartitions is related to many classical topics in partition theory, including Rogers-Ramanujan partitions, theta functions, mock theta functions, partitions with parts separated by parity, and crank statistics. Utilizing both analytic and combinatorial methods, they give two forms of the three-parameter generating functions. Moreover, the authors study several special cases that demonstrate the potential broader impact the study of copartitions may have.