On the Möbius function of permutations under the pattern containment order

David Marchant

Published 2020-12-26Version 1

We study several aspects of the M\"{o}bius function, $\mu[\sigma,\pi]$, on the poset of permutations under the pattern containment order. First, we consider cases where the lower bound of the poset is indecomposable. We show that $\mu[\sigma,\pi]$ can be computed by considering just the indecomposable permutations contained in the upper bound. We apply this to the case where the upper bound is an increasing oscillation, and give a method for computing the value of the M\"{o}bius function that only involves evaluating simple inequalities. We then consider conditions on an interval which guarantee that the value of the M\"{o}bius function is zero. In particular, we show that if a permutation $\pi$ contains two intervals of length 2, which are not order-isomorphic to one another, then $\mu[1,\pi] = 0$. This allows us to prove that the proportion of permutations of length $n$ with principal M\"{o}bius function equal to zero is asymptotically bounded below by $(1-1/e)^2 \ge 0.3995$. This is the first result determining the value of $\mu[1,\pi]$ for an asymptotically positive proportion of permutations $\pi$. Following this, we use ''2413-balloon'' permutations to show that the growth of the principal M\"{o}bius function on the permutation poset is exponential. This improves on previous work, which has shown that the growth is at least polynomial. We then generalise 2413-balloon permutations, and find a recursion for the value of the principal M\"{o}bius function of these generalisations.