Catalan product conjecture for Young tableau faces of the Birkhoff polytope

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Let n≥2n\ge 2, and let FnF_n be the n×nn\times n matrix whose (i,j)(i,j) entry is 11 when j≤i+1j\le i+1 and 00 otherwise. The matrix FnF_n is a union of permutation matrices corresponding to a face of the Birkhoff polytope BnB_n of dimension (n2)\binom{n}{2} with 2n−12^{n-1} vertices. Catalan product conjecture. The relative volume of FnF_n is

∏i=0n−21i+1(2ii)\prod_{i=0}^{n-2} \frac{1}{i+1}\binom{2i}{i}

of the first n−1n-1 Catalan numbers. The triangulation computations suggest this simple rule for the relative volumes of these faces, but no proof is supplied.

References

Primary source

Clara S. Chan and David P. Robbins, “On the volume of the polytope of doubly stochastic matrices”, arXiv:math/9806076 (1998).

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