A poset view of the major index.

DOI10.1016/J.AAM.2014.09.005MaRDI QIDQ472919zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Richard Ehrenborg, Margaret A. Readdy

Publication date 20 November 2014

Published in Advances in Applied Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.4283

Boolean algebras of cross-polytopes face lattices of cross-polytopes graded posets major index principal specializations signed permutations simplicial posets

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Permutations, words, matrices (05A05) Combinatorics of partially ordered sets (06A07) Combinatorial properties of polytopes and polyhedra (number of faces, shortest paths, etc.) (52B05)

Abstract: We introduce the Major MacMahon map and show how this map interacts with the pyramid and bipyramid operators. When the Major MacMahon map is applied to the ab-index of a simplicial poset, it yields the q-analogue of n! times the h-polynomial of the poset. Applying the map to the Boolean algebra gives the distribution of the major index on the symmetric group, a seminal result due to MacMahon. Similarly, when applied to the cross-polytope we obtain the distribution of one of the major indexes on signed permutations due to Reiner.

Review text

This paper extends the combinatorial major index statistic to posets. The main object of study is the \textit{major MacMahon map} \(\Theta\colon\mathbb Z\langle\mathbf{a,b}\rangle\to\mathbb Z[q]\), which is defined on a word in the noncommuting variables \(\mathbf a\) and \(\mathbf b\) by \(\Theta(w):=\prod_{i:w_i=\mathbf b}q^i\) and is extended to the ring of non-commuting polynomials in \(\mathbf a\) and \(\mathbf b\) by linearity. The connection to posets comes about in the following way. Let \(P\) be a graded poset of rank \(n+1\) with a minimal element \(\widehat 0\) and a maximal element \(\widehat 1\). The \(\mathbf{ab}\)-index of \(P\), \(\Psi(P)\in\mathbb Z\langle\mathbf{a,b}\rangle\), encodes useful combinatorial information about \(P\). Hence it is interesting to apply the major MacMahon map to the \(\mathbf{ab}\)-index of such a poset. The authors show that if \(P\) is a graded simplicial poset, then \(\Theta(\Psi(P))=[n]!\cdot h(P)\), where \(h(P)\) is the \(h\)-polynomial of \(P\) (written as a polynomial in the variable \(q\)) and \([n]!\) is the \(q\)-analogue of \(n!\). Next, the authors show that if \(P\) is a graded poset of rank \(m\) and \(Q\) is a graded poset of rank \(n\), then \[ \Theta(\Psi(P\times Q))={m+n\choose n}\cdot\Theta(\Psi(P))\cdot\Theta(\Psi(Q)). \] They apply this to products of chain posets to give a poset proof of MacMahon's classical result that if \(\alpha=(\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_k)\) is a composition of \(n\), then \[ \sum_\pi q^{\text{maj}(\pi)}=\frac{[n]!}{[\alpha_1]!\cdot [\alpha_2]!\cdots [\alpha_k]!}, \] where the sum is taken over all permutations of the multiset containing \(\alpha_i\) instances of the number \(i\) for all \(1\leq i\leq k\).

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