English

A Factorization of the Log-Concavity Operator for Pascal Determinantal Arrays and Their Infinite Row-Wise Log-Concavity

Combinatorics 2026-01-27 v2

Abstract

We study the Pascal determinantal arrays \PDk\PD_k, whose entries \PDk(i,j)\PD_k(i,j) are the k×kk\times k minors of the lower-triangular Pascal matrix P=((ab))a,b0P=( \binom{a}{b} )_{a,b\ge 0}. We prove an exact factorization of the row-wise log-concavity operator: \LC(\PDk)=\PDk1\Had\PDk+1, \LC(\PD_k)=\PD_{k-1}\Had\PD_{k+1}, where \LC(a)j=aj2aj1aj+1\LC(a)_j=a_j^2-a_{j-1}a_{j+1} and \Had\Had denotes the Hadamard (entrywise) product. This identity is established by an elementary algebraic manipulation implicitly based on the idea of start of David rule. We further prove a general inequality asserting that the log-concavity operator is submultiplicative under Hadamard products of log-concave arrays: \LC(A\HadX)\LC(A)\Had\LC(X)\LC(A\Had X)\ge\LC(A)\Had\LC(X). Combining the factorization with this inequality yields a uniform algebraic proof that every row of every array \PDk\PD_k (k1k\ge 1) is infinitely log-concave, extending the celebrated theorem of Br\"and\'en for the particular case of Pascal's triangle (\PD1\PD_1) to the entire determinantal hierarchy. Applications include the log-convexity of {\PDk(i,j)}k0\{\PD_k(i,j)\}_{k\ge 0} in the determinantal order kk and a family of determinantal Hadamard inequalities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.06414,
  title  = {A Factorization of the Log-Concavity Operator for Pascal Determinantal Arrays and Their Infinite Row-Wise Log-Concavity},
  author = {Hossein Teimoori Faal and Hasan Khodakarami},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.06414},
  year   = {2026}
}