arXiv2024
Recently, Banderier et. al. considered Young tableaux with walls, which are similar to standard Young tableaux, except that local decreases are allowed at some walls. We count the numbers $\overline{f}_m(n)$ of Young tableaux of shape $2\times mn$ with walls, that allow local decreases at the $(jm+i)$-th columns for all $j=0,\dots, n-1$ and $i=2,\dots, m$. We find that they have nice generating functions (thanks to the OEIS) as follows. $$\overline{F}_m(x)=\sum_{n\geq 0}\overline{f}_m(n)x^n=\prod_{k=1}^{m}C(e^{k\frac{2πi}{m}} x^\frac{1}{m})=\exp \left(\sum_{n\geq 1}\binom{2mn-1}{mn-1}\frac{x^n}{n}\right),$$ where $C(x)=\frac{1-\sqrt{1-4x}}{2x}$ is the well-known Catalan generating function. We prove generalizations of this result. Firstly, we use the Yamanouchi word to transform Young tableaux with horizontal walls into lattice paths. This results in a determinant formula. Then by lattice path counting theory, we obtain the generating functions $F_r(x)$ for the number of lattice paths from $(0,0)$ to $(\ell n-r,kn)$ that never go above the path $(N^kE^{\ell})^{n-1}N^kE^{\ell-r}$, where $N,E$ stand for north and east steps, respectively. We also obtain exponential formulas for $F_1(x)$ and $F_\ell(x)$. The formula for $\overline{F}_m(x)$ is thus proved since it is just $F_1(x)$ specializes at $k=\ell=m$.