Lattice paths and branched continued fractions. II. Multivariate Lah polynomials and Lah symmetric functions

We introduce the generic Lah polynomials $L_{n,k}(\phi)$, which enumerate unordered forests of increasing ordered trees with a weight $\phi_i$ for each vertex with $i$ children. We show that, if the weight sequence $\phi$ is Toeplitz-totally positive, then the triangular array of generic Lah polynomials is totally positive and the sequence of row-generating polynomials $L_n(\phi,y)$ is coefficientwise Hankel-totally positive. Upon specialization we obtain results for the Lah symmetric functions and multivariate Lah polynomials of positive and negative type. The multivariate Lah polynomials of positive type are also given by a branched continued fraction. Our proofs use mainly the method of production matrices; the production matrix is obtained by a bijection from ordered forests of increasing ordered trees to labeled partial Lukasiewicz paths. We also give a second proof of the continued fraction using the Euler--Gauss recurrence method.