Level of Faces for Exponential Sequence of Arrangements

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the bivariate exponential generating function $F_l(x,y)$ for the number of level-$l$ faces of an exponential sequence of arrangements (ESA), and establish the formula $F_l(x,y)=\big(F_1(x,y)\big)^l$ with a combinatorial interpretation. Its specialization at $x=0$ recovers a result first obtained by Chen et al. [3,4] for certain classic ESAs and later generalized to all ESAs by Southerland et al. [8]. As a byproduct, we obtain that an alternating sum of the number of level-$l$ faces is invariant with respect to the choice of ESA, and is exactly the Stirling number of the second kind. We also extend the binomial-basis expansion theorem [3,4,14] and Stanley's formula on ESAs [9] from characteristic polynomials to Whitney polynomials.