Wenjie Fang - On the area-depth symmetry on Łukasiewicz paths

dmtcs:17405 - Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, June 28, 2026, vol. 28:3 - https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.17405
On the area-depth symmetry on Łukasiewicz pathsArticle

Authors: Wenjie Fang

In an effort to further understanding $q,t$-Catalan statistics, a new statistic on Dyck paths called $\mathtt{depth}$ was proposed in Pappe, Paul and Schilling (2022) and was shown to be jointly equi-distributed with the well-known $\mathtt{area}$ statistics. In a recent preprint, Qu and Zhang (2025) generalized $\mathtt{depth}$ to so-called ``$\vec{k}$-Dyck paths''. They showed that $\mathtt{area}$ and $\mathtt{depth}$ are also jointly equi-distributed over such paths with a fixed multiset of up-steps and a given first up-step, and they conjectured that the same holds when also fixing the last up-step. In this short note, we settle this conjecture on the more general context of Łukasiewicz paths by interpreting $\mathtt{area}$ and $\mathtt{depth}$ under the classical bijection between Łukasiewicz paths and plane trees, through which the symmetry is transparent.

8 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, final version


Volume: vol. 28:3
Section: Combinatorics
Published on: June 28, 2026
Accepted on: June 22, 2026
Submitted on: January 27, 2026
Keywords: Combinatorics

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