Pattern avoidance in non-crossing and non-nesting permutations

Motivated by the study of Mahonian statistics, in 2000, Babson and Steingrímsson [Sém. Lothar. Comb] introduced the notion of a “generalized permutation pattern” (GP) which generalizes the concept of “classical” permutation pattern introduced by Knuth in 1969. The invention of GPs led to a large number of publications related to properties of these patterns in permutations and words. Since the work of Babson and Steingrímsson, several further generalizations of permutation patterns have appeared in the literature, each bringing a new set of permutation or word pattern problems and often new connections with other combinatorial objects and disciplines. For example, Bousquet-Mélou et al. [J. Comb. Theory A] introduced a new type of permutation pattern that allowed them to relate permutation patterns theory to the theory of partially ordered sets.In this paper we introduce yet another, more general definition of a pattern, called place-difference-value patterns (PDVP) that covers all of the most common definitions of permutation and/or word patterns that have occurred in the literature. PDVPs provide many new ways to develop the theory of patterns in permutations and words. We shall give several examples of PDVPs in both permutations and words that cannot be described in terms of any other pattern conditions that have been introduced previously. Finally, we discuss several bijective questions linking our patterns to other combinatorial objects.

We consider uniform random permutations drawn from a family enumerated through generating trees. We develop a new general technique to establish a central limit theorem for the number of consecutive occurrences of a fixed pattern in such permutations. We propose a technique to sample uniform permutations in such families as conditioned random colored walks. Building on that, we derive the behavior of the consecutive patterns in random permutations studying properties of the consecutive increments in the corresponding random walks. The method applies to families of permutations with a one‐dimensional‐labeled generating tree (together with some technical assumptions) and implies local convergence for random permutations in such families. We exhibit ten different families of permutations, most of them being permutation classes, that satisfy our assumptions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work where generating trees—which were introduced to enumerate combinatorial objects—have been used to establish probabilistic results.

Unary patterns under permutations

A certain subset of the multiset permutations of length n satisfying two restrictions has been recently shown to be enumerated by the Catalan number Cn−1. These sequences have been termed Catalan words and are closely related to the 321-avoiding permutations. Here, we consider the problem of avoidance of patterns of type (1,2) wherein the second and third letters within an occurrence of a pattern are required to be adjacent. We derive in several cases functional equations satisfied by the generating functions enumerating members of the avoidance class which we solve by various methods. In one case, the generating function can be expressed in terms of a sum of reciprocals of Chebyshev polynomials, while in another, in terms of a previously studied q-Bell number. Among the sequences arising as enumerators of avoidance classes are the Motzkin and Fibonacci numbers. In several cases, it is more convenient to consider first the problem of avoidance on the subset of Catalan words whose members have no adjacent letters the same before moving to the larger problem on all Catalan words.

Thue characterized completely the avoidability of unary patterns. Adding function variables gives a general setting capturing avoidance of powers, avoidance of patterns with palindromes, avoidance of powers under coding, and other questions of recent interest. Unary patterns with permutations have been previously analysed only for lengths up to 3. Consider a pattern $$p=\pi _{i_1}(x)\ldots \pi _{i_r}(x)$$ , with $$r\ge 4$$ , x a word variable over an alphabet $$\Sigma $$ and $$\pi _{i_j}$$ function variables, to be replaced by morphic or antimorphic permutations of $$\Sigma $$ . If $$|\Sigma |\ge 3$$ , we show the existence of an infinite word avoiding all pattern instances having $$|x|\ge 2$$ . If $$|\Sigma |=3$$ and all $$\pi _{i_j}$$ are powers of a single $$\pi $$ , the length restriction is removed. In general, the restriction on x cannot be removed, even for powers of permutations: for every positive integer n there exists N and a pattern $$\pi ^{i_1}(x)\ldots \pi ^{i_n}(x)$$ which is unavoidable over all $$\Sigma $$ .

In 1990, Lakshmibai and Sandhya published a characterization of singular Schubert varieties in flag manifolds using the notion of pattern avoidance. This was the first time pattern avoidance was used to characterize geometrical properties of Schubert varieties. Their results are very closely related to work of Haiman, Ryan and Wolper, but Lakshmibai-Sandhya were the first to use that language exactly. Pattern avoidance in permutations was used historically by Knuth, Pratt, Tarjan, and others in the 1960's and 1970's to characterize sorting algorithms in computer science. Lascoux and Sch$\text{\"u}$tzenberger also used pattern avoidance to characterize vexillary permutations in the 1980's. Now, there are many geometrical properties of Schubert varieties that use pattern avoidance as a method for characterization including Gorenstein, factorial, local complete intersections, and properties of Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials. These are what we call consequences of the Lakshmibai-Sandhya theorem. We survey the many beautiful results, generalizations, and remaining open problems in this area. We highlight the advantages of using pattern avoidance characterizations in terms of linear time algorithms and the ease of access to the literature via Tenner's Database of Permutation Pattern Avoidance. This survey is based on lectures by the second author at Osaka, Japan 2012 for the Summer School of the Mathematical Society of Japan based on the topic of Schubert calculus.

Optical burst switching (OBS) is an experimental network technology that enables the construction of very high-capacity routers, using optical data paths and electronic control. In this paper, we study wavelength converting switches using tunable lasers and wavelength grating routers, that are suitable for use in OBS systems and evaluate their performance. We show how the routing problem for these switches can be formulated as a combinatorial puzzle or game, in which the design of the game board corresponds to the pattern of permutation used at the input sections of the switch. We use this to show how the permutation pattern affects the performance of the switch, and to facilitate the design of permutation patterns that yield the best performance. We give upper bounds on the number of different wavelength channels that can be routed through such switches (regardless of the permutation pattern), and show that for 2/spl times/2 switches, there is a simple permutation pattern that achieves these bounds. For larger switches, randomized permutation patterns produce the best results. We study the performance of optical burst switches using wavelength converting switches based on several different permutation patterns. We also present a novel routing algorithm called the most available wavelength assignment and evaluate its benefits in improving the switch throughput. Our results show that for a typical configuration, the switch with the best permutation pattern has more than 87% of the throughput of a fully nonblocking switch.

There is a connection between permutation groups and permutation patterns: for any subgroup $G$ of the symmetric group $S_\ell$ and for any $n \geq \ell$, the set of $n$-permutations involving only members of $G$ as $\ell$-patterns is a subgroup of $S_n$. Making use of the monotone Galois connection induced by the pattern avoidance relation, we characterize the permutation groups that arise via pattern avoidance as automorphism groups of relations of a certain special form. We also investigate a related monotone Galois connection for permutation groups and describe its closed sets and kernels as automorphism groups of relations.

A consecutive pattern in a permutation π is another permutation \(\sigma\) determined by the relative order of a subsequence of contiguous entries of π. Traditional notions such as descents, runs, and peaks can be viewed as particular examples of consecutive patterns in permutations, but the systematic study of these patterns has flourished in the last 15 years, during which a variety of different techniques have been used. We survey some interesting developments in the subject, focusing on exact and asymptotic enumeration results, the classification of consecutive patterns into equivalence classes, and their applications to the study of one-dimensional dynamical systems.

Constraint programming (CP) is a powerful tool for modeling mathematical concepts and objects and finding both solutions or counter examples. One of the major strengths of CP is that problems can easily be combined or expanded. In this paper, we illustrate that this versatility makes CP an ideal tool for exploring problems in permutation patterns. We declaratively define permutation properties, permutation pattern avoidance and containment constraints using CP and show how this allows us to solve a wide range of problems. We show how this approach enables the arbitrary composition of these conditions, and also allows the easy addition of extra conditions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our techniques by modelling the containment and avoidance of six permutation patterns, eight permutation properties and measuring five statistics on the resulting permutations. In addition to calculating properties and statistics for the generated permutations, we show that arbitrary additional constraints can also be easily and efficiently added. This approach enables mathematicians to investigate permutation pattern problems in a quick and efficient manner. We demonstrate the utility of constraint programming for permutation patterns by showing how we can easily and efficiently extend the known permutation counts for a conjecture involving the class of $1324$ avoiding permutations. For this problem, we expand the enumeration of $1324$-avoiding permutations with a fixed number of inversions to permutations of length 16 and show for the first time that in the enumeration there is a pattern occurring which follows a unique sequence on the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

We investigate pattern avoidance in alternating permutations and generalizations thereof. First, we study pattern avoidance in an alternating analogue of Young diagrams. In particular, we extend Babson-West's notion of shape-Wilf equivalence to apply to alternating permutations and so generalize results of Backelin-West-Xin and Ouchterlony to alternating permutations. Second, we study pattern avoidance in the more general context of permutations with restricted ascents and descents. We consider a question of Lewis regarding permutations that are the reading words of thickened staircase Young tableaux, that is, permutations that have $k-1$ ascents followed by a descent, followed by $k-1$ ascents, et cetera. We determine the relative sizes of the sets of pattern-avoiding $(k-1)$-ascent permutations in terms of the forbidden pattern. Furthermore, inequalities in the sizes of sets of pattern-avoiding permutations in this context arise from further extensions of shape-equivalence type enumerations. This paper is the first of a two-paper series presenting the work of Beyond alternating permutations: Pattern avoidance in Young diagrams and tableaux (arXiv:1301.6796v1). The second in the series is Ascent-descent Young diagrams and pattern avoidance in alternating permutations (by the second author, submitted).

We extend the concept of pattern avoidance in permutations on a totally ordered set to pattern avoidance in permutations on partially ordered sets. The number of permutations on $P$ that avoid the pattern $\pi$ is denoted $Av_P(\pi)$. We extend a proof of Simion and Schmidt to show that $Av_P(132) \leq Av_P(123)$ for any poset $P$, and we exactly classify the posets for which equality holds.

Shannon Entropy is the preeminent tool for measuring the level of uncertainty (and conversely, information content) in a random variable. In the field of communications, entropy can be used to express the information content of given signals (represented as time series) by considering random variables which sample from specified subsequences. In this paper, we will discuss how an entropy variant, the \textit{permutation entropy} can be used to study and classify radio frequency signals in a noisy environment. The permutation entropy is the entropy of the random variable which samples occurrences of permutation patterns from time series given a fixed window length, making it a function of the distribution of permutation patterns. Since the permutation entropy is a function of the relative order of data, it is (global) amplitude agnostic and thus allows for comparison between signals at different scales. This article is intended to describe a permutation patterns approach to a data driven problem in radio frequency communications research, and includes a primer on all non-permutation pattern specific background. An empirical analysis of the methods herein on radio frequency data is included. No prior knowledge of signals analysis is assumed, and permutation pattern specific notation will be included. This article serves as a self-contained introduction to the relationship between permutation patterns, entropy, and signals analysis for studying radio frequency signals and includes results on a classification task.

Let $I_n(\pi)$ denote the number of involutions in the symmetric group ${\cal S}_{n}$ which avoid the permutation $\pi$. We say that two permutations $\alpha,\beta\in{\cal S}_{j}$ may be exchanged if for every $n$, $k$, and ordering $\tau$ of $j+1,\ldots,k$, we have $I_n(\alpha\tau)=I_n(\beta\tau)$. Here we prove that $12$ and $21$ may be exchanged and that $123$ and $321$ may be exchanged. The ability to exchange $123$ and $321$ implies a conjecture of Guibert, thus completing the classification of ${\cal S}_{4}$ with respect to pattern avoidance by involutions; both of these results also have consequences for longer patterns. Pattern avoidance by involutions may be generalized to rook placements on Ferrers boards which satisfy certain symmetry conditions. Here we provide sufficient conditions for the corresponding generalization of the ability to exchange two prefixes and show that these conditions are satisfied by $12$ and $21$ and by $123$ and $321$. Our results and approach parallel work by Babson and West on analogous problems for pattern avoidance by general (not necessarily involutive) permutations, with some modifications required by the symmetry of the current problem.

We begin with a discussion of the symmetricity of $\maj$ over $\des$ in pattern avoidance classes, and its relationship to $\maj$-Wilf equivalence. From this, we explore the distribution of permutation statistics across pattern avoidance for patterns of length 3 and 4. We then begin discussion of Han's bijection, a bijection on permutations which sends the major index to Denert's statistic and the descent number to the (strong) excedance number. We show the existence of several infinite families of fixed points for Han's bijection. Finally, we discuss the image of pattern avoidance classes under Han's bijection, for the purpose of finding a condition which has the same distribution of $\den$ over $\exc$ as pattern avoidance does of $\maj$ over $\des$.