1. Introduction
Throughout this paper,
is a commutative ring, and all unadorned tensor products are over
. Let
be the algebra of symmetric functions. It is well known that
is a graded
-algebra since
, where
are the homogeneous symmetric functions of degree
n, and ⨁ denotes the usual direct sum of modules [
1].
For any partition , the monomial symmetric function
is given by
where
is the group of all permutations of the set
which leave all but finite elements invariant [
1]. Letting
run through the set
of all partitions, this gives the
monomial -basis of
[
1,
2]. Letting
run only through the set
of partitions of
n gives the monomial
-basis for
[
1,
2].
We have
, which is a Hopf algebra [
1,
2], where
The multiplication is the map
The unit is the inclusion map
The comultiplication is the map
in which
is the partition obtained by taking the multiset union of the parts of
and
, and then reordering them to make them weakly decreasing.
The counit is the
-linear map
with
and
.
For the basic notions of symmetric functions, the reader is referred to [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7].
Let
denote the (nonempty) partition
, where
is the multiplicity of part
i in partition
and
k is the largest part of
, as opposed to the traditional additive notation. This notation is called the
multiplicative notation or the
frequency notation for
[
8].
Let
be a partition written in frequency notation. Following [
9], the
partition polynomial is defined by
If we define the partition
, then
is the partition polynomial of the new partition
defined by
. Continuing in this way, we obtain the following (finite) sequence of partitions
whose partition polynomials are related by differentiation [
9]:
Explicitly, one has
where
.
where
.
where
The main goal of this paper is to use partition polynomials to define new combinatorial structures on
. Explicitly, the paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we introduce Stirling partitions and factorial partition polynomials, and we show that every partition polynomial of a partition
is a factorial partition polynomial of a unique Stirling partition
.
Section 3 is devoted to introducing partition differential equations and their corresponding partitions using integration as well as giving explicit examples.
Section 4 explores new combinatorial operations on
and investigates an alternative characterization for primitive elements in
using partition polynomials and calculus tools. The last section of this paper summarizes the most important consequences and gives some potential future directions that offer some paths for the next investigation.
2. Stirling Partitions and Factorial Partition Polynomials
Recall that factorial polynomials are defined by
where
n is a non-negative integer (
by convention).
Definition 1. Let be a partition.
- (i)
The factorial partition polynomial of λ is defined by - (ii)
λ is called a Stirling partition of the second kind (or simply a Stirling partition) if
where s are non-negative integers, and the numbers are the Stirling number of the second kind.
Notice that the above definition implies that if , then .
Theorem 1. Let be a partition.
- (i)
There exists a unique Stirling partition with .
- (ii)
Conversely, if λ is a Stirling partition, then it gives rise to a unique partition with . Furthermore, .
Proof. - (i)
where
and
- (ii)
If
is a Stirling partition, then
where
s are non-negative integers and the numbers
are the Stirling number of the second kind. Set
. Then, it is quite obvious that
and
. The uniqueness follows directly from the fact that the set of ordinary powers of
x and the set of factorial powers of
x both form a basis for the vector space of polynomials, and the numbers
are simply a “change in basis coefficients” for these bases.
□
The partition defined in Theorem (1) is called the Stirling partition of . It is well known that for any positive integer j. Thus, the following proposition is an obvious consequence.
Proposition 1. Let be a partition, and let be the Stirling partition of λ. Then,
- (i)
If for , then - (ii)
If for , then - (iii)
If for , then
Example 1. - (i)
Let . Then, - (ii)
To illustrate Proposition (1), let . Then,
3. Partition Differential Equations
Definition 2. Let and fix an integer d, where . A -partition differential equation is a differential equation of the form subject to the initial conditionswhere , and the coefficients of each polynomial of the polynomials are non-negative integers. Unless confusion is possible, we will simply say that is a partition differential equation. The solutions are completely determined by the given partition and by the initial conditions .
Remark 1. - (i)
In the above definition, .
- (ii)
If and , then and .
Let
be a
-partition differential equation. We have
Applying the initial conditions, we have
Theorem 2. Let be a partition, and let be a -partition differential equation subject to the initial conditions for all .
Proof. Using (
11), we have
which is the solution of the
-partition differential equation
satisfying the initial conditions
for
, where
Thus,
□
Theorem 3. Let λ be a partition, and letbe a -partition differential equation subject to the initial conditions - (i)
If and , then - (ii)
If and , then - (iii)
If and , then we have
Proof. - (i)
We have a
-partition differential equation
where
Using (
11), we have
Consequently, we have
- (ii)
We have a
-partition differential equation
where
,
,
, and
Using (
11), we have
Consequently, we have
- (iii)
We have a
-partition differential equation
where
,
,
and
Using (
11), we have
Therefore,
□
4. New Algebraic and Coalgebraic Structures for the Algebra of Symmetric Functions
Definition 3. Let and be partitions. Then,
- (i)
, where is the partitionwhere - (ii)
, where is the partitionwhereand
We have the following theorem:
Theorem 4. Let . Then,
- (i)
- (ii)
The operation ⊙ is associative.
- (iii)
- (iv)
For any partition differential equations and , one has - (v)
For any partition differential equations , , and , one has - (vi)
- (vii)
- (viii)
- (ix)
For any partition differential equations and , one has - (x)
For any partition differential equations , , and , one has
Proof. - (i)
This is obvious.
- (ii)
For any
, we have
. Thus,
- (iii)
This follows directly from .
- (iv)
This comes immediately from the fact that
and Definition (3).
- (v)
For any
, we have
Therefore, we have
- (vi)
For any
, we have
Accordingly, we have
- (vii)
This follows directly from Theorem (1) and Definition (3).
Parts (vii)-(x) are immediate consequences of parts (ii)–(vi).
□
Using the convention
(the constant polynomial
), we have
Using Theorem (4), we have the following theorem.
Theorem 5. - (i)
The triple ) is a -algebra, where the multiplication is the mapand the unit is the inclusion map - (ii)
The triple ) is a -coalgebra, where the comultiplication is the mapand the counit is the -linear mapwith and .
Proof. The proof of
follows directly from Theorem (4). To prove part
, we have to show that the following diagrams are commutative:
Here,
and
are the isomorphisms
and
. For any
, we have
Therefore, the commutativity of the associativity diagram follows. Checking the commutativity of the unity diagram can be performed as follows:
It follows that is a -coalgebra. □
Example 2. Let be a partition. Then, Using the definitions of the polynomials and the map , we end the paper by giving an explicit description for the primitive elements in the -coalgebra .
Theorem 6. Let be a nonempty partition. Then, is a primitive element in if and only if .
Proof. The case is obvious when the length of equals 1. If and , then divides . Consequently, we have , where , and this completes the proof. □
Definition 4. Letwhere is defined in Theorem (1). Then, is called the partition primitive function of λ. Let
be the Jacobian matrix of
, where
and
are the transpose of the gradient of the first and second component, respectively. The following theorem shows that the partition primitive functions can be used to characterize the primitive elements in
.
Theorem 7. Let be a nonempty partition, and write . Then,
- (i)
and are primitive elements in if and only if .
- (ii)
For any and , let , where . Then, and are primitive elements in if and only if .
Proof. We note that the Jacobian matrix of
is given by
So,
Thus,
, and
if and only if
and
. It follows from Theorem (6) that
is a primitive element in
if and only if
. The proof of the other part follows directly from the fact that
So,
and
. □
5. Brief Conclusions and Future Directions
5.1. Brief Conclusions
- (i)
Every partition corresponds uniquely to a Stirling partition.
- (ii)
While partitions behave well with integration, the integrand partitions are completely determined by the initial conditions of the partition differential equations.
- (iii)
Partition polynomials can be used as extremely useful tools to establish combinatorial structures on the algebra of symmetric functions.
- (iv)
Partition primitive functions play a central role in our investigation of characterizing primitive elements in .
5.2. Future Directions
A Bayer pattern array can be seen in (
Figure 1):
Every image can be seen as a basic element for a certain free module generated by a basis indexed by the set of all partitions or compositions (based on the shape of its pixels) [
10,
11]. Consequently, we can apply some digital image processing tools, such as Bayer’s filter, to define coalgebraic structures in terms of colors using [
10]. We can also extend our research to define composition polynomials and use that to introduce combinatorial algebraic or coalgebraic structures using [
11]. One can also think of developing partition primitive functions and using the integral of partitions to define new structures on the algebra of symmetric functions.