Matthieu Josuat-Vergès
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Cumulants of the q-semicircular law, Tutte polynomials, and heaps
dmtcs:3074 -
Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science,
January 1, 2012,
DMTCS Proceedings vol. AR, 24th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC 2012)
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https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.3074
Cumulants of the q-semicircular law, Tutte polynomials, and heapsArticle
The q-semicircular law as introduced by Bożejko and Speicher interpolates between the Gaussian law and the semicircular law, and its moments have a combinatorial interpretation in terms of matchings and crossings. We prove that the cumulants of this law are, up to some factor, polynomials in q with nonnegative coefficients. This is done by showing that they are obtained by an enumeration of connected matchings, weighted by the evaluation at (1,q) of a Tutte polynomial. The two particular cases q=0 and q=2 have also alternative proofs, related with the fact that these particular evaluation of the Tutte polynomials count some orientations on graphs. Our methods also give a combinatorial model for the cumulants of the free Poisson law.