An involution for trivariate symmetries of vincular patterns

Abstract

We provide a bijective proof of the equidistribution of two pairs of vincular patterns in permutations, thereby resolving a recent open problem of Bitonti, Deb, and Sokal (arXiv:2412.10214). Since the bijection is involutive, we also confirm their conjecture on the equidistribution of triple vincular patterns. Somewhat unexpectedly, we show that this involution is closed on the set of Baxter permutations, thereby implying another trivariate symmetries of vincular patterns. The proof of this second result requires a variant of a characterization of Baxter permutations in terms of restricted Laguerre histories, first given by Viennot using the Françon-Viennot bijection.

19 pages, 3 figures