English

On multiple and infinite log-concavity

Combinatorics 2014-05-09 v1 Number Theory

Abstract

Following Boros--Moll, a sequence (an)(a_n) is mm-log-concave if Lj(an)0\mathcal{L}^j (a_n) \geq 0 for all j=0,1,,mj = 0, 1, \ldots, m. Here, L\mathcal{L} is the operator defined by L(an)=an2an1an+1\mathcal{L} (a_n) = a_n^2 - a_{n - 1} a_{n + 1}. By a criterion of Craven--Csordas and McNamara--Sagan it is known that a sequence is \infty-log-concave if it satisfies the stronger inequality ak2rak1ak+1a_k^2 \geq r a_{k - 1} a_{k + 1} for large enough rr. On the other hand, a recent result of Br\"and\'en shows that \infty-log-concave sequences include sequences whose generating polynomial has only negative real roots. In this paper, we investigate sequences which are fixed by a power of the operator L\mathcal{L} and are therefore \infty-log-concave for a very different reason. Surprisingly, we find that sequences fixed by the non-linear operators L\mathcal{L} and L2\mathcal{L}^2 are, in fact, characterized by a linear 4-term recurrence. In a final conjectural part, we observe that positive sequences appear to become \infty-log-concave if convoluted with themselves a finite number of times.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.1765,
  title  = {On multiple and infinite log-concavity},
  author = {Luis A. Medina and Armin Straub},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.1765},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

13 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:08:39.732Z