Pattern avoidance in partial permutations

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Publication:625391



Abstract: Motivated by the concept of partial words, we introduce an analogous concept of partial permutations. A partial permutation of length n with k holes is a sequence of symbols pi=pi1pi2...pin in which each of the symbols from the set {1,2,...,n-k} appears exactly once, while the remaining k symbols of pi are "holes". We introduce pattern-avoidance in partial permutations and prove that most of the previous results on Wilf equivalence of permutation patterns can be extended to partial permutations with an arbitrary number of holes. We also show that Baxter permutations of a given length k correspond to a Wilf-type equivalence class with respect to partial permutations with (k-2) holes. Lastly, we enumerate the partial permutations of length n with k holes avoiding a given pattern of length at most four, for each n >= k >= 1.


The paper deals with pattern-avoidance in partial permutations. A \textit{partial permutation} of size \(n\) with \(k\) holes is a word such that each symbol from the set \(\{1, 2,\dots,n - k\}\) appears exactly once and the remaining \(k\) symbols are ``holes. The paper extends many well-known results on Wilf equivalence of permutation patterns to partial permutations with an arbitrary number of holes. In particular, the authors give refinements of earlier results due to \textit{J. Backelin, J. West} and \textit{G. Xin} [``Wilf-equivalence for singleton classes, Adv. Appl. Math. 38, No.\,2, 133--148 (2007; Zbl 1127.05002)] and \textit{Z. E. Stankova-Frenkel} and \textit{J. West} [``Explicit enumeration of 321, hexagon-avoiding permutations, Discrete Math. 280, No.\,1--3, 165--189 (2004; Zbl 1041.05003)], respectively. More precisely, they show that the patterns \(123 \cdots m\tau\) and \(m(m-1)\cdots21\tau\) are strongly Wilf-equivalent in the set of partial permutations, where \(\tau\) is any permutation of \(\{m+1, \dots, t \}\) and the patterns \(312\tau\) and \(231\tau\) are strongly Wilf-equivalent in the set of partial permutations, where \(\tau\) is a permutation of \(\{4,5,\dots,r\}\). Moreover, the authors find a connection between Baxter permutations of size \(k\) and partial permutations with \(k-2\) holes. Also, they enumerate the partial permutations of size \(n\) with \(k\) holes avoiding a given pattern of length at most four, for each \(n \geq k \geq1\).











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