Descent formula conjecture for preorder-polytope h-star polynomials

Let EE be a totally ordered nn-element set, let τ\tau be a preorder on EE, and let des(w)\operatorname{des}(w) be the number of descents of a word wEnw\in E^n. Define Wτ\mathcal W_\tau to be the set of words wEnw\in E^n such that, for every order ideal I\mathcal I of τ\tau, the elements of I\mathcal I appear at least I|\mathcal I| times in ww. Descent formula conjecture.

h(Qτ,t)=wWτtn1des(w).h^*(\mathcal Q_\tau,t)=\sum_{w\in\mathcal W_\tau}t^{n-1-\operatorname{des}(w)}.

The conjecture extends a formula known for arbor polytopes to all preorder polytopes; its resolution is not specified in the source.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Frédéric Chapoton and Christos A. Athanasiadis, “Polytopes and posets associated to preorders”, arXiv:2605.26916 (2026).

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