Passing through a stack k times

Abstract

We consider the number of passes a permutation needs to take through a stack if we only pop the appropriate output values and start over with the remaining entries in their original order. We define a permutation [Formula: see text] to be [Formula: see text]-pass sortable if [Formula: see text] is sortable using [Formula: see text] passes through the stack. Permutations that are [Formula: see text]-pass sortable are simply the stack sortable permutations as defined by Knuth. We define the permutation class of [Formula: see text]-pass sortable permutations in terms of their basis. We also show all [Formula: see text]-pass sortable classes have finite bases by giving bounds on the length of a basis element of the permutation class for any positive integer [Formula: see text]. Finally, we define the notion of tier of a permutation [Formula: see text] to be the minimum number of passes after the first pass required to sort [Formula: see text]. We then give a bijection between the class of permutations of tier [Formula: see text] and a collection of integer sequences studied by Parker [The combinatorics of functional composition and inversion, PhD thesis, Brandeis University (1993)]. This gives an exact enumeration of tier [Formula: see text] permutations of a given length and thus an exact enumeration for the class of [Formula: see text]-pass sortable permutations. Finally, we give a new derivation for the generating function in [S. Parker, The combinatorics of functional composition and inversion, PhD thesis, Brandeis University (1993)] and an explicit formula for the coefficients.