English

The Defective Parking Space and Defective Kreweras Numbers

Combinatorics 2026-03-27 v4

Abstract

A defective (m,n)(m,n)-parking function with defect dd is a parking function with mm cars attempting to park on a street with nn parking spots in which exactly dd cars fail to park. We establish a way to compute the defect of a defective (m,n)(m,n)-parking function and show that the defect of a parking function is invariant under the action of Sm\mathfrak{S}_m, the symmetric group on [m]={1,2,,m}[m]=\{1,2,\ldots,m\}. We introduce the defective parking space DParkm,n{{\sf DPark}}_{m,n} spanned by defective parking functions and describe its Frobenius characteristic as an Sm\mathfrak{S}_m representation graded by defect via coefficients Krewd,n(λ)\mathrm{Krew}_{d,n}(\lambda) called defective Kreweras numbers. We provide a conjectured formula for Krewd,n(λ)\mathrm{Krew}_{d,n}(\lambda) for sufficiently large nn. We also show that the set of nondecreasing defective (m,n)(m,n)-parking functions with defect dd are in bijection with the set of standard Young tableaux of shape (n+d,md)(n + d, m - d). This implies that the number of Sm\mathfrak{S}_m-orbits of defective (m,n)(m,n)-parking functions with defect dd is given by nm+2d+1n+d+1(m+nn+d)\frac{n-m+2d+1}{n+d+1}\binom{m+n}{n+d}. We also give a multinomial formula for the size of an Sm\mathfrak{S}_m-orbit of a nondecreasing (m,n)(m,n)-parking function with defect dd. We conclude by using these results to give a new formula for the number of defective parking functions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.14635,
  title  = {The Defective Parking Space and Defective Kreweras Numbers},
  author = {Rebecca E. Garcia and Pamela E. Harris and Alex Moon and Aaron Ortiz and Lauren J. Quesada and Cynthia Marie Rivera Sánchez and Dwight Anderson Williams and Alexander N. Wilson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.14635},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

34 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables