The squish map and the \(\mathrm{SL}_2\) double dimer model (Q6131735)

Summary: A plane partition, whose 3D Young diagram is made of unit cubes, can be approximated by a ``coarser'' plane partition, made of cubes of side length 2. Indeed, there are two such approximations obtained by ``rounding up'' or ``rounding down'' to the nearest cube. We relate this coarsening (or downsampling) operation to the squish map introduced by the second author in earlier work. We exhibit a related measure-preserving map between the dimer model on the honeycomb graph, and the \(\mathrm{SL}_2\) double dimer model on a coarser honeycomb graph; we compute the most interesting special case of this map, related to plane partition \(q\)-enumeration with 2-periodic weights. As an application, we specialize the weights to be certain roots of unity, obtain novel generating functions (some known, some new, and some conjectural) that \((-1)\)-enumerate certain classes of pairs of plane partitions according to how their dimer configurations interact.