Reciprocals of Partition Polynomials

Abstract

Ballantine--Beck--Feigon--Maurischat introduced the subsum polynomial \[ \operatorname{sp}(λ,x):=\prod_i (1+x^{λ_i}) \] attached to an integer partition $\hat{I}»$, and studied rational functions obtained by summing reciprocals of these polynomials over natural classes of partitions. They posed ten conjectures which naturally divide into coprimality and divisibility questions, special-value and recurrence formulas, and coefficient-shape problems. We prove all of the conjectures in the first two families: the ordinary and binary coprimality/divisibility conjectures, and the odd and ternary special-value/recurrence conjectures. AxiomProver autonomously produced Lean/mathlib formalizations and machine-checkable proofs of these six conjectures, and also discovered a counterexample to the statement as printed; the corrected form remains open.

We added commentary indicating overlap of arguments here with earlier work by Ballantine et al, and what the new ideas are here