English

Total positivity of some polynomial matrices that enumerate labeled trees and forests. II. Rooted labeled trees and partial functional digraphs

Combinatorics 2024-04-24 v3 Classical Analysis and ODEs

Abstract

We study three combinatorial models for the lower-triangular matrix with entries tn,k=(nk)nnkt_{n,k} = \binom{n}{k} n^{n-k}: two involving rooted trees on the vertex set [n+1][n+1], and one involving partial functional digraphs on the vertex set [n][n]. We show that this matrix is totally positive and that the sequence of its row-generating polynomials is coefficientwise Hankel-totally positive. We then generalize to polynomials tn,k(y,z)t_{n,k}(y,z) that count improper and proper edges, and further to polynomials tn,k(y,ϕ)t_{n,k}(y,\mathbf{\phi}) in infinitely many indeterminates that give a weight yy to each improper edge and a weight m!ϕmm! \, \phi_m for each vertex with mm proper children. We show that if the weight sequence ϕ\mathbf{\phi} is Toeplitz-totally positive, then the two foregoing total-positivity results continue to hold. Our proofs use production matrices and exponential Riordan arrays.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.03999,
  title  = {Total positivity of some polynomial matrices that enumerate labeled trees and forests. II. Rooted labeled trees and partial functional digraphs},
  author = {Xi Chen and Alan D. Sokal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.03999},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

LaTeX2e, 75 pages, includes 16 figures. Version 2 (37 pages, 2 figures) is the abridged version published in Advances in Applied Mathematics. Version 3 (the default) is identical to Version 1