Descents, inversions, and major indices in permutation groups

Abstract

A multivariate generating function involving the descent, major index, and inversion statistic first given by Ira Gessel is generalized to other permutation groups. We provide generating functions for variants of these three statistics for the Weyl groups of type B and D, wreath product groups, and multiples of permutations. All of our ideas are combinatorial in nature and exploit fundamental relationships between the elementary and homogeneous symmetric functions.