Two covering polynomials of a finite poset, with applications to root systems and ad-nilpotent ideals (Q353400)

Suppose that \((\mathcal{P},\preceq)\) is a finite poset. An element \(y\in \mathcal{P}\) is said to be covered by \(x\in \mathcal{P}\) if \(y\prec x\) and there is no element \(z\) such that \(x \prec z \prec y.\) For each \(x\in\mathcal{P},\) take \(\kappa(x)\) to be the number of elements of \(\mathcal{P}\) covered by \(x,\) and \(\iota(x)\) to be the number of elements of \(\mathcal{P}\) covering \(x.\) One can define two covering polynomials \(\hat{\mathcal{K}}(q):=\sum_{x\in \mathcal{P}}q^{\kappa(x)}\) and \(\check{\mathcal{K}}(q):=\sum_{x\in \mathcal{P}}q^{\iota(x)}.\) These two polynomials are different in general. The author of the paper under review considers a finite-dimensional complex simple Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\) with a fixed set of positive roots and corresponding Borel subalgebra \(\mathfrak{b}\) and computes \(\hat{\mathcal{K}}(q)\), \(\check{\mathcal{K}}(q)\) and \(\hat{\mathcal{K}}(q)-\check{\mathcal{K}}(q)\) for the following posets: 1) the poset of positive roots, 2) the poset of ad-nilpotent ideals of \(\mathfrak{b},\) 3) the poset of abelian ideals of \(\mathfrak{b}.\) He also computes the mentioned polynomials for the poset of positive roots of an irreducible non-reduced root system.