Linked partition ideals and Russell's three-colored partitions

Abstract

Russell recently introduced a family of three-colored partitions in analogy with earlier work by Alladi and Gordon. He showed that their enumerations are surprisingly connected to the classic Rogers-Ramanujan identities. Using the method of linked partition ideals, we elaborate on Russell's results by further counting each part color. Unlike Russell's proofs, our arguments do not require any use of computer algebra systems. With these multivariate generating function relations, we are led to confirm a conjecture of Russell. Furthermore, our results offer a combinatorial understanding of a new triple Rogers-Ramanujan type identity.