The spt-Crank for Ordinary Partitions

Abstract

The spt-function $spt(n)$ was introduced by Andrews as the weighted counting of partitions of $n$ with respect to the number of occurrences of the smallest part. Andrews, Garvan and Liang defined the spt-crank of an $S$-partition which leads to combinatorial interpretations of the congruences of $spt(n)$ mod 5 and 7. Let $N_S(m,n)$ denote the net number of $S$-partitions of $n$ with spt-crank $m$. Andrews, Garvan and Liang showed that $N_S(m,n)$ is nonnegative for all integers $m$ and positive integers $n$, and they asked the question of finding a combinatorial interpretation of $N_S(m,n)$. In this paper, we introduce the structure of doubly marked partitions and define the spt-crank of a doubly marked partition. We show that $N_S(m,n)$ can be interpreted as the number of doubly marked partitions of $n$ with spt-crank $m$. Moreover, we establish a bijection between marked partitions of $n$ and doubly marked partitions of $n$. A marked partition is defined by Andrews, Dyson and Rhoades as a partition with exactly one of the smallest parts marked. They consider it a challenge to find a definition of the spt-crank of a marked partition so that the set of marked partitions of $5n+4$ and $7n+5$ can be divided into five and seven equinumerous classes. The definition of spt-crank for doubly marked partitions and the bijection between the marked partitions and doubly marked partitions leads to a solution to the problem of Andrews, Dyson and Rhoades.