Ballantine–Beck–Merca injectivity conjecture for elementary symmetric partitions

Let nn be a positive integer. A partition of nn is a weakly decreasing sequence of positive integers with size nn and length \ell. For 1j1\leq j\leq\ell, define prej(λ)\operatorname{pre}_j(\lambda) to be the partition whose parts are the products of all jj-element subcollections of the parts of λ\lambda. Ballantine–Beck–Merca's injectivity conjecture. For j2j\geq 2, the function prej\operatorname{pre}_j is injective on the set of partitions of size nn and length j\ell\geq j. This conjecture is false: the j=2j=2 case is solved, while the case =j\ell=j has been disproved, and the present paper disproves the claim for =2j\ell=2j when j3j\geq3.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Vixail Hadelyn, Harper Niergarth, Weiyou Li and Wenhui Li, “Counterexamples regarding elementary symmetric partitions”, arXiv:2606.00420 (2026).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2604.17424.

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