A new decomposition of ascent sequences and Euler--Stirling statistics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new recursive decomposition of ascent sequences, enabling detailed analysis of Euler--Stirling statistics, proving conjectures on distributional symmetries, and generalizing generating functions related to ascent sequences and inversion sequences.

Contribution

It presents a novel recursive decomposition method for ascent sequences, leading to new formulas, bijections, and proofs of conjectures on their statistical distributions.

Findings

Confirmed and extended Dukes and Parviainen's conjecture on zero and max distribution.

Derived a generalized generating function for ascent sequence statistics.

Established a bijective proof of quadruple equidistribution involving ascent sequence statistics.

Abstract

As shown by Bousquet-M\'elou--Claesson--Dukes--Kitaev (2010), ascent sequences can be used to encode $({\bf2+2})$-free posets. It is known that ascent sequences are enumerated by the Fishburn numbers, which appear as the coefficients of the formal power series $$\sum_{m=1}^{\infty}\prod_{i=1}^m (1-(1-t)^i).$$ In this paper, we present a novel way to recursively decompose ascent sequences, which leads to: (i) a calculation of the Euler--Stirling distribution on ascent sequences, including the numbers of ascents ($\asc$), repeated entries $(\rep)$, zeros ($\zero$) and maximal entries ($\max$). In particular, this confirms and extends Dukes and Parviainen's conjecture on the equidistribution of $\zero$ and $\max$. (ii) a far-reaching generalization of the generating function formula for $(\asc,\zero)$ due to Jel\'inek. This is accomplished via a bijective proof of the quadruple equidistribution of $(\asc,\rep,\zero,\max)$ and $(\rep,\asc,\rmin,\zero)$, where $\rmin$ denotes the right-to-left minima statistic of ascent sequences. (iii) an extension of a conjecture posed by Levande, which asserts that the pair $(\asc,\zero)$ on ascent sequences has the same distribution as the pair $(\rep,\max)$ on $({\bf2-1})$-avoiding inversion sequences. This is achieved via a decomposition of $({\bf2-1})$-avoiding inversion sequences parallel to that of ascent sequences. This work is motivated by a double Eulerian equidistribution of Foata (1977) and a tempting bi-symmetry conjecture, which asserts that the quadruples $(\asc,\rep,\zero,\max)$ and $(\rep,\asc,\max,\zero)$ are equidistributed on ascent sequences.