English

On Bergeron's positivity problem for $q$-binomial coefficients

Combinatorics 2018-04-30 v2 Commutative Algebra

Abstract

F. Bergeron recently asked the intriguing question whether (b+cb)q(a+dd)q\binom{b+c}{b}_q -\binom{a+d}{d}_q has nonnegative coefficients as a polynomial in qq, whenever a,b,c,da,b,c,d are positive integers, aa is the smallest, and ad=bcad=bc. We conjecture that, in fact, this polynomial is also always unimodal, and combinatorially show our conjecture for a3a\le 3 and any b,c4b,c\ge 4. The main ingredient will be a novel (and rather technical) application of Zeilberger's KOH theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.06187,
  title  = {On Bergeron's positivity problem for $q$-binomial coefficients},
  author = {Fabrizio Zanello},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.06187},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Final version. To appear in the Electronic J. Combinatorics

R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:47:34.720Z