Generating Functions for Permutations which Contain a Given Descent Set

  • Jeffrey Remmel
  • Manda Riehl

Abstract

A large number of generating functions for permutation statistics can be obtained by applying homomorphisms to simple symmetric function identities. In particular, a large number of generating functions involving the number of descents of a permutation $\sigma$, $des(\sigma)$, arise in this way. For any given finite set $S$ of positive integers, we develop a method to produce similar generating functions for the set of permutations of the symmetric group $S_n$ whose descent set contains $S$. Our method will be to apply certain homomorphisms to symmetric function identities involving ribbon Schur functions.

Published
2010-02-15
Article Number
R27