The Fermat cubic, elliptic functions, continued fractions, and a combinatorial excursion

Abstract

Elliptic functions considered by Dixon in the nineteenth century and related to Fermat's cubic, $x^3+y^3=1$, lead to a new set of continued fraction expansions with sextic numerators and cubic denominators. The functions and the fractions are pregnant with interesting combinatorics, including a special P\'olya urn, a continuous-time branching process of the Yule type, as well as permutations satisfying various constraints that involve either parity of levels of elements or a repetitive pattern of order three. The combinatorial models are related to but different from models of elliptic functions earlier introduced by Viennot, Flajolet, Dumont, and Fran{\c{c}}on.