Forum of Mathematics, Sigma (Jan 2021)

Symmetry of Narayana Numbers and Rowvacuation of Root Posets

  • Colin Defant,
  • Sam Hopkins

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/fms.2021.47
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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For a Weyl group W of rank r, the W-Catalan number is the number of antichains of the poset of positive roots, and the W-Narayana numbers refine the W-Catalan number by keeping track of the cardinalities of these antichains. The W-Narayana numbers are symmetric – that is, the number of antichains of cardinality k is the same as the number of cardinality $r-k$ . However, this symmetry is far from obvious. Panyushev posed the problem of defining an involution on root poset antichains that exhibits the symmetry of the W-Narayana numbers.

Keywords