Restricted 3412-Avoiding Involutions: Continued Fractions, Chebyshev Polynomials and Enumerations

Abstract

Several authors have examined connections among restricted permutations, continued fractions, and Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind. In this paper we prove analogues of these results for involutions which avoid 3412. Our results include a recursive procedure for computing the generating function for involutions which avoid 3412 and any set of additional patterns. We use our results to give enumerations and generating functions for involutions which avoid 3412 and various sets of additional patterns. In many cases we express these generating functions in terms of Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind.