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Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science |
Vol. 18 no. 2, Permutation Patterns 2015
1. $2\times 2$ monotone grid classes are finitely based
In this note, we prove that all $2 \times 2$ monotone grid classes are finitely based, i.e., defined by a finite collection of minimal forbidden permutations. This follows from a slightly more general result about certain $2 \times 2$ (generalized) grid classes having two monotone cells in the same row.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
2. Patterns in Inversion Sequences I
Permutations that avoid given patterns have been studied in great depth for their connections to other fields of mathematics, computer science, and biology. From a combinatorial perspective, permutation patterns have served as a unifying interpretation that relates a vast array of combinatorial structures. In this paper, we introduce the notion of patterns in inversion sequences. A sequence $(e_1,e_2,\ldots,e_n)$ is an inversion sequence if $0 \leq e_i<i$ for all $i \in [n]$. Inversion sequences of length $n$ are in bijection with permutations of length $n$; an inversion sequence can be obtained from any permutation $\pi=\pi_1\pi_2\ldots \pi_n$ by setting $e_i = |\{j \ | \ j < i \ {\rm and} \ \pi_j > \pi_i \}|$. This correspondence makes it a natural extension to study patterns in inversion sequences much in the same way that patterns have been studied in permutations. This paper, the first of two on patterns in inversion sequences, focuses on the enumeration of inversion sequences that avoid words of length three. Our results connect patterns in inversion sequences to a number of well-known numerical sequences including Fibonacci numbers, Bell numbers, Schröder numbers, and Euler up/down numbers.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
3. Pattern Avoidance in Task-Precedence Posets
We have extended classical pattern avoidance to a new structure: multiple task-precedence posets whose Hasse diagrams have three levels, which we will call diamonds. The vertices of each diamond are assigned labels which are compatible with the poset. A corresponding permutation is formed by reading these labels by increasing levels, and then from left to right. We used Sage to form enumerative conjectures for the associated permutations avoiding collections of patterns of length three, which we then proved. We have discovered a bijection between diamonds avoiding 132 and certain generalized Dyck paths. We have also found the generating function for descents, and therefore the number of avoiders, in these permutations for the majority of collections of patterns of length three. An interesting application of this work (and the motivating example) can be found when task-precedence posets represent warehouse package fulfillment by robots, in which case avoidance of both 231 and 321 ensures we never stack two heavier packages on top of a lighter package.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
4. An Erdős--Hajnal analogue for permutation classes
Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a permutation class that does not contain all layered permutations or all colayered permutations. We prove that there is a constant $c$ such that every permutation in $\mathcal{C}$ of length $n$ contains a monotone subsequence of length $cn$.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
5. Snow Leopard Permutations and Their Even and Odd Threads
Caffrey, Egge, Michel, Rubin and Ver Steegh recently introduced snow leopard permutations, which are the anti-Baxter permutations that are compatible with the doubly alternating Baxter permutations. Among other things, they showed that these permutations preserve parity, and that the number of snow leopard permutations of length $2n-1$ is the Catalan number $C_n$. In this paper we investigate the permutations that the snow leopard permutations induce on their even and odd entries; we call these the even threads and the odd threads, respectively. We give recursive bijections between these permutations and certain families of Catalan paths. We characterize the odd (resp. even) threads which form the other half of a snow leopard permutation whose even (resp. odd) thread is layered in terms of pattern avoidance, and we give a constructive bijection between the set of permutations of length $n$ which are both even threads and odd threads and the set of peakless Motzkin paths of length $n+1$.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
6. Asymptotics for minimal overlapping patterns for generalized Euler permutations, standard tableaux of rectangular shape, and column strict arrays
A permutation $\tau$ in the symmetric group $S_j$ is minimally overlapping if any two consecutive occurrences of $\tau$ in a permutation $\sigma$ can share at most one element. Bóna \cite{B} showed that the proportion of minimal overlapping patterns in $S_j$ is at least $3 -e$. Given a permutation $\sigma$, we let $\text{Des}(\sigma)$ denote the set of descents of $\sigma$. We study the class of permutations $\sigma \in S_{kn}$ whose descent set is contained in the set $\{k,2k, \ldots (n-1)k\}$. For example, up-down permutations in $S_{2n}$ are the set of permutations whose descent equal $\sigma$ such that $\text{Des}(\sigma) = \{2,4, \ldots, 2n-2\}$. There are natural analogues of the minimal overlapping permutations for such classes of permutations and we study the proportion of minimal overlapping patterns for each such class. We show that the proportion of minimal overlapping permutations in such classes approaches $1$ as $k$ goes to infinity. We also study the proportion of minimal overlapping patterns in standard Young tableaux of shape $(n^k)$.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
7. Packing densities of layered permutations and the minimum number of monotone sequences in layered permutations
In this paper, we present two new results of layered permutation densities. The first one generalizes theorems from Hästö (2003) and Warren (2004) to compute the permutation packing of permutations whose layer sequence is~$(1^a,\ell_1,\ell_2,\ldots,\ell_k)$ with~$2^a-a-1\geq k$ (and similar permutations). As a second result, we prove that the minimum density of monotone sequences of length~$k+1$ in an arbitrarily large layered permutation is asymptotically~$1/k^k$. This value is compatible with a conjecture from Myers (2003) for the problem without the layered restriction (the same problem where the monotone sequences have different lengths is also studied).
Section:
Permutation Patterns
8. Pattern avoidance in forests of binary shrubs
We investigate pattern avoidance in permutations satisfying some additional restrictions. These are naturally considered in terms of avoiding patterns in linear extensions of certain forest-like partially ordered sets, which we call binary shrub forests. In this context, we enumerate forests avoiding patterns of length three. In four of the five non-equivalent cases, we present explicit enumerations by exhibiting bijections with certain lattice paths bounded above by the line $y=\ell x$, for some $\ell\in\mathbb{Q}^+$, one of these being the celebrated Duchon's club paths with $\ell=2/3$. In the remaining case, we use the machinery of analytic combinatorics to determine the minimal polynomial of its generating function, and deduce its growth rate.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
9. Pattern avoidance for set partitions à la Klazar
In 2000 Klazar introduced a new notion of pattern avoidance in the context of set partitions of $[n]=\{1,\ldots, n\}$. The purpose of the present paper is to undertake a study of the concept of Wilf-equivalence based on Klazar's notion. We determine all Wilf-equivalences for partitions with exactly two blocks, one of which is a singleton block, and we conjecture that, for $n\geq 4$, these are all the Wilf-equivalences except for those arising from complementation. If $\tau$ is a partition of $[k]$ and $\Pi_n(\tau)$ denotes the set of all partitions of $[n]$ that avoid $\tau$, we establish inequalities between $|\Pi_n(\tau_1)|$ and $|\Pi_n(\tau_2)|$ for several choices of $\tau_1$ and $\tau_2$, and we prove that if $\tau_2$ is the partition of $[k]$ with only one block, then $|\Pi_n(\tau_1)| <|\Pi_n(\tau_2)|$ for all $n>k$ and all partitions $\tau_1$ of $[k]$ with exactly two blocks. We conjecture that this result holds for all partitions $\tau_1$ of $[k]$. Finally, we enumerate $\Pi_n(\tau)$ for all partitions $\tau$ of $[4]$.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
10. The permutation class Av(4213,2143)
We determine the structure of permutations avoiding the patterns 4213 and 2143. Each such permutation consists of the skew sum of a sequence of plane trees, together with an increasing sequence of points above and an increasing sequence of points to its left. We use this characterisation to establish the generating function enumerating these permutations. We also investigate the properties of a typical large permutation in the class and prove that if a large permutation that avoids 4213 and 2143 is chosen uniformly at random, then it is more likely than not to avoid 2413 as well.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
11. The Complexity of Pattern Matching for $321$-Avoiding and Skew-Merged Permutations
The Permutation Pattern Matching problem, asking whether a pattern permutation $\pi$ is contained in a permutation $\tau$, is known to be NP-complete. In this paper we present two polynomial time algorithms for special cases. The first algorithm is applicable if both $\pi$ and $\tau$ are $321$-avoiding; the second is applicable if $\pi$ and $\tau$ are skew-merged. Both algorithms have a runtime of $O(kn)$, where $k$ is the length of $\pi$ and $n$ the length of $\tau$.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
12. Right-jumps and pattern avoiding permutations
We study the iteration of the process "a particle jumps to the right" in permutations. We prove that the set of permutations obtained in this model after a given number of iterations from the identity is a class of pattern avoiding permutations. We characterize the elements of the basis of this class and we enumerate these "forbidden minimal patterns" by giving their bivariate exponential generating function: we achieve this via a catalytic variable, the number of left-to-right maxima. We show that this generating function is a D-finite function satisfying a nice differential equation of order~2. We give some congruence properties for the coefficients of this generating function, and we show that their asymptotics involves a rather unusual algebraic exponent (the golden ratio $(1+\sqrt 5)/2$) and some unusual closed-form constants. We end by proving a limit law: a forbidden pattern of length $n$ has typically $(\ln n) /\sqrt{5}$ left-to-right maxima, with Gaussian fluctuations.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
13. Descent c-Wilf Equivalence
Let $S_n$ denote the symmetric group. For any $\sigma \in S_n$, we let $\mathrm{des}(\sigma)$ denote the number of descents of $\sigma$, $\mathrm{inv}(\sigma)$ denote the number of inversions of $\sigma$, and $\mathrm{LRmin}(\sigma)$ denote the number of left-to-right minima of $\sigma$. For any sequence of statistics $\mathrm{stat}_1, \ldots \mathrm{stat}_k$ on permutations, we say two permutations $\alpha$ and $\beta$ in $S_j$ are $(\mathrm{stat}_1, \ldots \mathrm{stat}_k)$-c-Wilf equivalent if the generating function of $\prod_{i=1}^k x_i^{\mathrm{stat}_i}$ over all permutations which have no consecutive occurrences of $\alpha$ equals the generating function of $\prod_{i=1}^k x_i^{\mathrm{stat}_i}$ over all permutations which have no consecutive occurrences of $\beta$. We give many examples of pairs of permutations $\alpha$ and $\beta$ in $S_j$ which are $\mathrm{des}$-c-Wilf equivalent, $(\mathrm{des},\mathrm{inv})$-c-Wilf equivalent, and $(\mathrm{des},\mathrm{inv},\mathrm{LRmin})$-c-Wilf equivalent. For example, we will show that if $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are minimally overlapping permutations in $S_j$ which start with 1 and end with the same element and $\mathrm{des}(\alpha) = \mathrm{des}(\beta)$ and $\mathrm{inv}(\alpha) = \mathrm{inv}(\beta)$, then $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are $(\mathrm{des},\mathrm{inv})$-c-Wilf equivalent.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
14. Permutation Pattern matching in (213, 231)-avoiding permutations
Given permutations σ of size k and π of size n with k < n, the permutation pattern matching problem is to decide whether σ occurs in π as an order-isomorphic subsequence. We give a linear-time algorithm in case both π and σ avoid the two size-3 permutations 213 and 231. For the special case where only σ avoids 213 and 231, we present a O(max(kn 2 , n 2 log log n)-time algorithm. We extend our research to bivincular patterns that avoid 213 and 231 and present a O(kn 4)-time algorithm. Finally we look at the related problem of the longest subsequence which avoids 213 and 231.
Section:
Permutation Patterns
15. A Bijection on Classes Enumerated by the Schröder Numbers
We consider a sorting machine consisting of two stacks in series where the first stack has the added restriction that entries in the stack must be in decreasing order from top to bottom. The class of permutations sortable by this machine are known to be enumerated by the Schröder numbers. In this paper, we give a bijection between these sortable permutations of length $n$ and Schröder paths -- the lattice paths from $(0,0)$ to $(n-1,n-1)$ composed of East steps $(1,0)$, North steps $(0,1)$, and Diagonal steps $(1,1)$ that travel weakly below the line $y=x$.
Section:
Permutation Patterns