Bijective recurrences concerning two Schröder triangles
arXiv:1908.03912
The paper provides bijective proofs of recurrence relations for the numbers of large and little Schröder paths with a given number of hills, shows that the resulting triangular arrays form Bell‑type Riordan arrays, and links these arrays to the distribution of the initial ascending run statistic on separable permutations.
Abstract
Let $r(n,k)$ (resp. $s(n,k)$) be the number of Schröder paths (resp. little Schröder paths) of length $2n$ with $k$ hills, and set $r(0,0)=s(0,0)=1$. We bijectively establish the following recurrence relations: \begin{align*} r(n,0)&=\sum\limits_{j=0}^{n-1}2^{j}r(n-1,j), r(n,k)&=r(n-1,k-1)+\sum\limits_{j=k}^{n-1}2^{j-k}r(n-1,j),\quad 1\le k\le n, s(n,0) &=\sum\limits_{j=1}^{n-1}2\cdot3^{j-1}s(n-1,j), s(n,k) &=s(n-1,k-1)+\sum\limits_{j=k+1}^{n-1}2\cdot3^{j-k-1}s(n-1,j),\quad 1\le k\le n. \end{align*} The infinite lower triangular matrices $[r(n,k)]_{n,k\ge 0}$ and $[s(n,k)]_{n,k\ge 0}$, whose row sums produce the large and little Schröder numbers respectively, are two Riordan arrays of Bell type. Hence the above recurrences can also be deduced from their $A$- and $Z$-sequences characterizations. On the other hand, it is well-known that the large Schröder numbers also enumerate separable permutations. This propelled us to reveal the connection with a lesser-known permutation statistic, called initial ascending run, whose distribution on separable permutations is shown to be given by $[r(n,k)]_{n,k\ge 0}$ as well.
20 pages, 6 figures and 2 tables