We consider Tuenter polynomials as linear combinations of descending factorials and show that coefficients of these linear combinations are expressed via a Catalan triangle of numbers. We also describe a triangle of coefficients in terms of some polynomials.
In this paper, we define four transformations on the classical Catalan triangle $mathcal{C}=(C_{n,k})_{ngeq kgeq 0}$ with $C_{n,k}=frac{k+1}{n+1}binom{2n-k}{n}$. The first three ones are based on the determinant and the forth is utilizing the permanent of a square matrix. It not only produces many known and new identities involving Catalan numbers, but also provides a new viewpoint on combinatorial triangles.
We first establish the result that the Narayana polynomials can be represented as the integrals of the Legendre polynomials. Then we represent the Catalan numbers in terms of the Narayana polynomials by three different identities. We give three different proofs for these identities, namely, two algebraic proofs and one combinatorial proof. Some applications are also given which lead to many known and new identities.
A polynomial $A(q)=sum_{i=0}^n a_iq^i$ is said to be unimodal if $a_0le a_1le cdots le a_kge a_{k+1} ge cdots ge a_n$. We investigate the unimodality of rational $q$-Catalan polynomials, which is defined to be $C_{m,n}(q)= frac{1}{[n+m]} left[ m+n atop nright]$ for a coprime pair of positive integers $(m,n)$. We conjecture that they are unimodal with respect to parity, or equivalently, $(1+q)C_{m+n}(q)$ is unimodal. By using generating functions and the constant term method, we verify our conjecture for $mle 5$ in a straightforward way.
The higher $q,t$-Catalan polynomial $C^{(m)}_n(q,t)$ can be defined combinatorially as a weighted sum of lattice paths contained in certain triangles, or algebraically as a complicated sum of rational functions indexed by partitions of $n$. This paper proves the equivalence of the two definitions for all $mgeq 1$ and all $nleq 4$. We also give a bijective proof of the joint symmetry property $C^{(m)}_n(q,t)=C^{(m)}_n(t,q)$ for all $mgeq 1$ and all $nleq 4$. The proof is based on a general approach for proving joint symmetry that dissects a collection of objects into chains, and then passes from a joint symmetry property of initial points and terminal points to joint symmetry of the full set of objects. Further consequences include unimodality results and specific formulas for the coefficients in $C^{(m)}_n(q,t)$ for all $mgeq 1$ and all $nleq 4$. We give analogous results for certain rational-slope $q,t$-Catalan polynomials.
Given a permutation $f$, we study the positroid Catalan number $C_f$ defined to be the torus-equivariant Euler characteristic of the associated open positroid variety. We introduce a class of repetition-free permutations and show that the corresponding positroid Catalan numbers count Dyck paths avoiding a convex subset of the rectangle. We show that any convex subset appears in this way. Conjecturally, the associated $q,t$-polynomials coincide with the generalized $q,t$-Catalan numbers that recently appeared in relation to the shuffle conjecture, flag Hilbert schemes, and Khovanov-Rozansky homology of Coxeter links.