On Parity Unimodality of $q$-Catalan Polynomials

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.