On a Conjecture on Pattern-Avoiding Machines

Abstract

Let s be West’s stack-sorting map, and let \(s_{T}\) be the generalized stack-sorting map, where instead of being required to increase, the stack avoids subpermutations that are order-isomorphic to any permutation in the set T. In 2020, Cerbai, Claesson, and Ferrari introduced the \(\sigma \)-machine \(s \circ s_{\sigma }\) as a generalization of West’s 2-stack-sorting-map \(s \circ s\). As a further generalization, in 2021, Baril, Cerbai, Khalil, and Vajnovski introduced the \((\sigma , \tau )\)-machine \(s \circ s_{\sigma , \tau }\) and enumerated \(\textrm{Sort}_{n}(\sigma ,\tau )\)—the number of permutations in \(S_n\) that are mapped to the identity by the \((\sigma , \tau )\)-machine—for six pairs of length 3 permutations \((\sigma , \tau )\). In this work, we settle a conjecture by Baril, Cerbai, Khalil, and Vajnovski on the only remaining pair of length 3 patterns \((\sigma , \tau ) = (132, 321)\) for which \(|\textrm{Sort}_{n}(\sigma , \tau )|\) appears in the OEIS. In addition, we enumerate \(\textrm{Sort}_n(123, 321)\), which does not appear in the OEIS, but has a simple closed form.