Limit Shape of Subpartition-Maximizing Partitions

Abstract

This is an expository note answering a question posed to us by Richard Stanley, in which we prove a limit shape theorem for partitions of $n$ which maximize the number of subpartitions. The limit shape and the growth rate of the number of subpartitions are explicit. The key ideas are to use large deviations estimates for random walks, together with convex analysis and the Hardy-Ramanujan asymptotics. Our limit shape coincides with Vershik's limit shape for uniform random partitions.