English

Combinatorics of poly-Bernoulli numbers

Combinatorics 2015-10-21 v1

Abstract

The Bn(k){\mathbb B}_n^{(k)} poly-Bernoulli numbers --- a natural generalization of classical Bernoulli numbers (Bn=Bn(1)B_n={\mathbb B}_n^{(1)}) --- were introduced by Kaneko in 1997. When the parameter kk is negative then Bn(k){\mathbb B}_n^{(k)} is a nonnegative number. Brewbaker was the first to give combinatorial interpretation of these numbers. He proved that Bn(k){\mathbb B}_n^{(-k)} counts the so called lonesum 0-10\text{-}1 matrices of size n×kn\times k. Several other interpretations were pointed out. We survey these and give new ones. Our new interpretation, for example, gives a transparent, combinatorial explanation of Kaneko's recursive formula for poly-Bernoulli numbers

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.05765,
  title  = {Combinatorics of poly-Bernoulli numbers},
  author = {Beáta Bényi and Peter Hajnal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.05765},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

20 pages, to appear in Studia Scientiarum Mathematicarum Hungarica

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:24:20.489Z