Modified Ballantine–Beck–Merca injectivity conjecture for prekpre_k

From papers

Let P(n)\mathcal{P}(n) denote the set of integer partitions of nn. For a partition λ=(λ1,λ2,,λ)\lambda=(\lambda_1,\lambda_2,\dots,\lambda_\ell), let prek(λ)pre_k(\lambda) be the partition whose parts are the products λi1λi2λik\lambda_{i_1}\lambda_{i_2}\cdots\lambda_{i_k} over all 1i1<i2<<ik1\leq i_1<i_2<\cdots<i_k\leq\ell.

Modified Ballantine–Beck–Merca conjecture. For k3k\geq 3, prekpre_k is injective on partitions of nn with jj parts for each jk+1j\geq k+1.

The modification excludes the kk-part case, where the original conjecture is false. The source gives the modified statement after observing that equal images must have the same number of parts, since (k)\binom{\ell}{k} is strictly increasing in \ell for fixed kk; its resolution is not supplied here.

Progress summary

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Aman Devnani and Pramod Eyyunni, “Elementary symmetric polynomials and a potentially injective family of maps on partitions”, arXiv:2604.17424 (2026).

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