Chen's log-concavity conjecture for longest increasing subsequence counts

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Let Sn\mathcal{S}_n be the symmetric group on [n]={1,2,…,n}[n]=\{1,2,\dots,n\}. For σ∈Sn\sigma\in\mathcal{S}_n, let ℓn(σ)\ell_n(\sigma) be the length of its longest increasing subsequence, and define

Ln,k={σ∈Sn:ℓn(σ)=k},ℓn,k=∣Ln,k∣.L_{n,k}=\{\sigma\in\mathcal{S}_n:\ell_n(\sigma)=k\},\qquad \ell_{n,k}=|L_{n,k}|.

Chen's conjecture. For any fixed nn, the sequence ℓn,1,ℓn,2,…,ℓn,n\ell_{n,1},\ell_{n,2},\ldots,\ell_{n,n} is log-concave. Equivalently, the distribution of ℓn(σ)\ell_n(\sigma) for a uniformly chosen random permutation σ\sigma is log-concave.

This conjecture concerns the shape of the longest-increasing-subsequence distribution in a uniformly random permutation and is related to the extensive asymptotic theory of that statistic. The supplied text attributes the conjecture to Chen and refers to further discussion by Bona, Leader, and Lee, but gives no resolution status.

References

Primary source

Jnaneshwar Baslingker, Manjunath Krishnapur and Mokshay Madiman, “Log-concavity in one-dimensional Coulomb gases and related ensembles”, arXiv:2412.15116 (2026).

Additional references

4 papers in this index state this conjecture (2013–2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2006.13146, arXiv:1703.06382, arXiv:1309.5693.

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