Partially Ordinal Sums and $P$-partitions

Abstract

We present a method of computing the generating function $f_P(\x)$ of $P$-partitions of a poset $P$. The idea is to introduce two kinds of transformations on posets and compute $f_P(\x)$ by recursively applying these transformations. As an application, we consider the partially ordinal sum $P_n$ of $n$ copies of a given poset, which generalizes both the direct sum and the ordinal sum. We show that the sequence $\{f_{P_n}(\x)\}_{n\ge 1}$ satisfies a finite system of recurrence relations with respect to $n$. We illustrate the method by several examples, including a kind of 3-rowed posets and the multi-cube posets.