Reciprocals of thinned exponential series

Abstract

The reciprocal of $e^{-x}$ has a power series about $0$ in which all coefficients are non-negative. Gessel [Reciprocals of exponential polynomials and permutation enumeration, Australas. J. Combin., 74, 2019] considered truncates of the power series of $e^{-x}$, i.e. polynomials of the form $\sum_{n=0}^r (-1)^n\frac{x^n}{n!}$, and established combinatorially that the reciprocal of the truncate has a power series with all coefficients non-negative precisely when $r$ is odd. Here we extend Gessel's observations to arbitrary ``thinned exponential series''. To be precise, let $A \subseteq \{1,3,5,\ldots\}$ and $B \subseteq \{2,4,6,\ldots\}$, and consider the series \[ 1-\sum_{a \in A} \frac{x^a}{a!} + \sum_{b \in B} \frac{x^b}{b!}. \] We consider conditions on $A$ and $B$ that ensure that the reciprocal series has all coefficients non-negative. We give combinatorial proofs for a large set of conditions, including whenever $1 \in A$ and the endpoints of the maximal consecutive intervals in $A \cup B$ are odd integers. In particular, the coefficients in the reciprocal series can be interpreted as ordered set partitions of $[n]$ with block size restrictions, or in terms of permutations with restricted lengths of maximally increasing runs, suitably weighted.