Partial parking functions (Q1625819)

For a natural number \(n \geq 3\), the authors consider hyperplanes in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) of the following type. Let, for \(1 \leq i < j \leq n\), \[ C_{ij} = \{(x_{1},\dots,x_{n}) \in \mathbb{R}^{n} : x_{i} = x_{j}\}, \] \[ S_{ij} = \{(x_{1},\dots,x_{n}) \in \mathbb{R}^{n} : x_{i} = x_{j} + 1\}, \] \[ I_{ij} = \{(x_{1},\dots,x_{n}) \in \mathbb{R}^{n} : x_{1} = x_{j} + i\}, \] and define for \(2 \leq k \leq n\) the following hyperplane arrangement, \[ \mathcal{A}_{n}^{k} = \{C_{ij} : 1 \leq i < j \leq n \} \cup \{I_{i,j} : 1 \leq i < j \leq n \text{ and } i < k \} \cup \{S_{ij} : k \leq i < j \leq n\}. \] The main result of the paper shows that the sets of labels of regions corresponding to the arrangements \(\mathcal{A}_{n}^{k}\) that interpolate between the Shi and the Ish arrangements can be characterised as \(\mathfrak{a}= (a_{1},\dots,a_{n}) \in [1,n]^{n}\) such that there is a permutation \(\sigma \in S_{n}\) with i) \(a_{\sigma(i)} \leq i\) for every \(i \in [1,a_{i}]\) and for every \(i \in [k,n]\) such that \(\sigma(i) \geq k\), ii) \(\sigma(i+1) < \sigma(i)\) for every \(i \in [1,a_{1}-1]\) such that \(\sigma(i) < k\). The authors call these sets of labels as partial parking functions, and it turns out that they all have the same number of elements, namely \((n+1)^{n-1}\).