Homomesy in products of two chains

Abstract

Many invertible actions $\tau$ on a set ${\mathcal{S}}$ of combinatorial objects, along with a natural statistic $f$ on ${\mathcal{S}}$, exhibit the following property which we dub \textbf{homomesy}: the average of $f$ over each $\tau$-orbit in ${\mathcal{S}}$ is the same as the average of $f$ over the whole set ${\mathcal{S}}$. This phenomenon was first noticed by Panyushev in 2007 in the context of the rowmotion action on the set of antichains of a root poset; Armstrong, Stump, and Thomas proved Panyushev's conjecture in 2011. We describe a theoretical framework for results of this kind that applies more broadly, giving examples in a variety of contexts. These include linear actions on vector spaces, sandpile dynamics, Suter's action on certain subposets of Young's Lattice, Lyness 5-cycles, promotion of rectangular semi-standard Young tableaux, and the rowmotion and promotion actions on certain posets. We give a detailed description of the latter situation for products of two chains.