Combinatorics of Triangular Partitions

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop the combinatorics of constructions associated to what we call \emph{triangular partitions}. As introduced in arXiv:2102.07931, these are the partitions whose cells are those lying below the line joining points $(r,0)$ and $(0,s)$, for any given positive reals $r$ and $s$. Classical notions such as Dyck paths and parking functions are naturally generalized by considering the set of partitions included in a given triangular partition. One of our striking results is that the restriction of the Young lattice to triangular partition has a planar Hasse diagram, with many nice properties. It follows that we may generalize the "first-return" recurrence, for the enumeration of classical Dyck paths, to the enumeration of all partitions contained in a fixed triangular one.