Enumeration of subspaces by dimension sequence (Q1185876)

Let \(F\) be the finite field with \(q\) elements and let \(V\) be an \(m\)-dimensional vector space over \(F\). Let \(A\) be a fixed linear endomorphism of \(V\). Suppose that \(X\subseteq V\) is a subspace. Let \(X_{(k)}\) denote the sum of the first \(k\) terms of the series \(X+AX+A^ 2 X+A^ 3 X+\dots\;\). For \(k\geq 1\), let \(j_ k\) be the dimension of the quotient space \(X_{(k)}/X_{(k-1)}\). The \(m\)-tuple \({\mathbf j}=(j_ 1,j_ 2,\dots,j_ m)\) is called the dimension sequence of the subspace \(X\). Let \(C({\mathbf j})\) denote the number of subspaces of \(V\) that have the dimension sequence \(j\). This paper finds two simple formulas for \(C({\mathbf j})\) for two special cases. If \(A\) is a shift operator (nilpotent with 1-dimensional null space), then \[ C({\mathbf j})=\prod_{k=2}^ m q^{j_ k^ 2} {{j_{k-1}} \brack {j_ k}}. \] If \(A\) is simple (no non-trivial invariant \(F\)-subspaces), then \[ C({\mathbf j})={{q^ m-1} \over {q^{j_ 1}-1}} \prod_{k=2}^ m q^{j_ k(j_ k-1)} {{j_{k-1}} \brack {j_ k}}. \]