Möbius species (Q1174751)

This paper is a contribution to bijective proof theory in combinatorics connecting \textit{A. Joyal's} theory of species (a concise review of it is given) and \textit{G.-C. Rota's} theory of Möbius functions of posets. The theory of Möbius species developed here yields a natural set-theoretic interpretation of power series with integer coefficients. The base category is the category \({\mathbf Int}\) of finite families of finite posets with unique maxima (\(\hat1\)) and minima (\(\hat0\)), where the morphisms are poset- isomorphisms. A Möbius species is defined to be a (covariant) functor \(M:{\mathbf B}\to{\mathbf Int}\), where \({\mathbf B}\) is the category of finite sets and bijections; \(\text{Möb} M(x):=\sum_{n\geq 0}\| M(\{1,\ldots,n\})\|{x^ n\over n!}\) is called the Möbius generating function for the Möbius species \(M\), where \(\| A\|:=\sum_ I\mu_ I(\hat 0,\hat 1)\), \(I\) runs through (the posets of) \(A\in Ob{\mathbf Int}\), and \(\mu_ I\) is the Möbius function for \(I\). Now, there are introduced an appropriate product \({\mathbf x}:{\mathbf Int}\times{\mathbf Int}\to{\mathbf Int}\) and combinatorial operations for Möbius species (sum, product, divided \(k\)-th power, substitution, derivative, pointed species), and the associated Möbius generating functions are proved to satisfy equalities being analogous to those for Joyal species. Furthermore, Möbius inverses for a Joyal species \(M\) are constructed in order to get a set-theoretic interpretation for the additive inverse, the multiplicative inverse, and the compositional inverse of the Hurwitz series \(M(x)\), the generating function of \(M\). For this end there is developed a general theory of \(c\)-monoids. The \(c\)-monoid on \(M(E)\) with \(E\in Ob {\mathbf B}\) induces a partial order, and considering appropriate intervals of the resulting poset, Möbius species (e.g. the additive inverse \(-M\)) with the desired properties can be constructed. Finally, the theory of Möbius species is extended to the case of several variables (multivariate Möbius species).