Permutations with Restricted Patterns and Dyck Paths

Abstract

We exhibit a bijection between 132-avoiding permutations and Dyck paths. Using this bijection, it is shown that all the recently discovered results on generating functions for 132-avoiding permutations with a given number of occurrences of the pattern 12…k follow directly from old results on the enumeration of Motzkin paths, among which is a continued fraction result due to Flajolet. As a bonus, we use these observations to derive further results and a precise asymptotic estimate for the number of 132-avoiding permutations of {1,2,…,n} with exactly r occurrences of the pattern 12…k. Second, we exhibit a bijection between 123-avoiding permutations and Dyck paths. When combined with a result of Roblet and Viennot, this bijection allows us to express the generating function for 123-avoiding permutations with a given number of occurrences of the pattern (k−1)(k−2)…1k in the form of a continued fraction and to derive further results for these permutations.