Flattened Stirling permutations (Q6943841)

A Stirling permutation is a permutation of the multiset \(\{1,1,2,2,\ldots,n,n\}\) (with two copies of each number from \(1\) to \(n\)) such that only numbers larger than \(i\) appear between the two occurrences of the number \(i\). They were introduced by \textit{I. Gessel} and \textit{R. P. Stanley} [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 24, 24--33 (1978; Zbl 0378.05006)]. The authors introduce the notion of a flattened Stirling permutation, defined by the property that the leading letters of the longest possible runs of ascents are in increasing order. The main result is a bijection between flattened Stirling permutations and type \(B\) set partitions, defined as partitions of the set \(\{0,\pm 1, \pm 2,\ldots, \pm (n-1)\}\) such that the negative of each block is also a block and there is a unique block that is its own negative. It was shown by \textit{V. E. Adler} [Theor. Math. Phys. 187, No. 3, 842--870 (2016; Zbl 1350.37072); translation from Teor. Mat. Fiz. 187, No. 3, 455--486 (2016)] that the number of type \(B\) set partitions is a Dowling number. Using this bijection, the authors provide a new proof of a formula for the Dowling numbers. The paper also determines the maximal number of runs for any flattened Stirling permutation, and enumerates flattened Stirling permutations with a small number of runs or with two runs of equal length.