Canon permutations and generalized descents of standard Young tableaux

Abstract

Canon permutations are permutations of the multiset having $k$ copies of each integer between $1$ and $n$, with the property that the subsequences obtained by taking the $j$th copy of each entry, for each fixed $j$, are all the same. For $k=2$, canon permutations are sometimes called nonnesting permutations, and it is known that the polynomial that enumerates them by the number of descents factors as a product of an Eulerian polynomial and a Narayana polynomial. We extend this result to arbitrary $k$, and we relate the problem to the enumeration of standard Young tableaux of rectangular shape with respect to generalized descent statistics. Our proof is bijective, and it also settles a conjecture of Sulanke about the distribution of certain lattice path statistics.