A combinatorial proof of a symmetry of $(t,q)$-Eulerian numbers of type $B$ and type $D$

Abstract

A symmetry of $(t,q)$-Eulerian numbers of type $B$ is combinatorially proved by defining an involution preserving many important statistics on the set of permutation tableaux of type $B$. This involution also proves a symmetry of the generating polynomial $\hat{D}_{n, k}(p,q,r)$ of number of crossings and alignments, and hence $q$-Eulerian numbers of type $A$ defined by L. Williams. By considering a restriction of our bijection, we were led to define a new statistic on the permutations of type $D$ and $(t,q)$-Eulerian numbers of type $D$, which is proved to have a nice symmetry as well. We conjecture that our new statistic is in the family of Eulerian statistics for the permutations of type $D$.