Combinatorial aspects of continued fractions

Abstract

We show that the universal continued fraction of the Stieltjes-Jacobi type is equivalent to the characteristic series of labelled paths in the plane. The equivalence holds in the set of series in non-commutative indeterminates. Using it, we derive direct combinatorial proofs of continued fraction expansions for series involving known combinatorial quantities: the Catalan numbers, the Bell and Stirling numbers, the tangent and secant numbers, the Euler and Eulerian numbers… . We also show combinatorial interpretations for the coefficients of the elliptic functions, the coefficients of inverses of the Tchebycheff, Charlier, Hermite, Laguerre and Meizner polynomials. Other applications include cycles of binomial coefficients and inversion formulae. Most of the proofs follow from direct geometrical correspondences between objects.