Parity considerations for drops in cycles on $\{1,2,\dots ,n\}$

Abstract

In 2019, A. Lazar and M. L. Wachs conjectured that the number of cycles on $[2n]$ with only even-odd drops equals the $n$-th Genocchi number. In this paper, we restrict our attention to a subset of cycles on $[n]$ that in all drops in the cycle, the latter entry is odd. We deduce two bivariate generating functions for such a subset of cycles with an extra variable introduced to count the number of odd-odd and even-odd drops, respectively. One of the generating function identities confirms Lazar and Wachs' conjecture, while the other identity implies that the number of cycles on $[2n-1]$ with only odd-odd drops equals the $(n-2)$-th Genocchi median.