Hook length biases in ordinary and $t$-regular partitions

Abstract

In this article, we study hook lengths of ordinary partitions and $t$-regular partitions. We establish hook length biases for the ordinary partitions and motivated by them we find a few interesting hook length biases in $2$-regular partitions. For a positive integer $k$, let $p_{(k)}(n)$ denote the number of hooks of length $k$ in all the partitions of $n$. We prove that $p_{(k)}(n)\ge p_{(k+1)}(n)$ for all $n\ge 0$ and $n\ne k+1$; and $p_{(k)}(k+1)-p_{(k+1)}(k+1)=-1$ for $k\ge 2$. For integers $t\ge 2$ and $k\ge 1$, let $b_{t,k}(n)$ denote the number of hooks of length $k$ in all the $t$-regular partitions of $n$. We find generating functions of $b_{t,k}(n)$ for certain values of $t$ and $k$. Exploring hook length biases for $b_{t,k}(n)$, we observe that in certain cases biases are opposite to the biases for ordinary partitions. We prove that $b_{2,2}(n)\ge b_{2,1}(n)$ for all $n>4$, whereas $b_{2,2}(n)\ge b_{2,3}(n)$ for all $n\ge 0$. We also propose some conjectures on biases among $b_{t,k}(n)$.

To appear at Journal of Number Theory