Stanley's conjectures on the Stern poset

TL;DR

This paper proves Stanley's conjectures about the real-rootedness and divisibility properties of certain polynomials derived from the Stern poset, and shows their coefficients are asymptotically normally distributed.

Contribution

The paper provides a simple recurrence for the polynomials $L_n(q)$ and confirms Stanley's conjectures, advancing understanding of the algebraic and combinatorial structure of the Stern poset.

Findings

Proved $L_n(q)$ has only real zeros.

Confirmed divisibility $L_{4n+1}(q)$ by $L_{2n}(q)$.

Established asymptotic normality of coefficients.

Abstract

The Stern poset $\mathcal{S}$ is a graded infinite poset naturally associated to Stern's triangle, which was defined by Stanley analogously to Pascal's triangle. Let $P_n$ denote the interval of $\mathcal{S}$ from the unique element of row $0$ of Stern's triangle to the $n$-th element of row $r$ for sufficiently large $r$. For $n\geq 1$ let \begin{align*} L_n(q)&=2\cdot\left(\sum_{k=1}^{2^n-1}A_{P_k}(q)\right)+A_{P_{2^n}}(q), \end{align*} where $A_{P}(q)$ represents the corresponding $P$-Eulerian polynomial. For any $n\geq 1$ Stanley conjectured that $L_n(q)$ has only real zeros and $L_{4n+1}(q)$ is divisible by $L_{2n}(q)$. In this paper we obtain a simple recurrence relation satisfied by $L_n(q)$ and affirmatively solve Stanley's conjectures. We also establish the asymptotic normality of the coefficients of $L_n(q)$.