An asymptotic distribution theory for Eulerian recurrences with applications
We study linear recurrences of Eulerian type of the form \[ P_n(v) = (α(v)n+γ(v))P_{n-1}(v) +β(v)(1-v)P_{n-1}'(v)\qquad(n\ge1), \] with $P_0(v)$ given, where $α(v), β(v)$ and $γ(v)$ are in most cases polynomials of low degrees. We characterize the various limit laws of the coefficients of $P_n(v)$ for large $n$ using the method of moments and analytic combinatorial tools under varying $α(v), β(v)$ and $γ(v)$, and apply our results to more than two hundred of concrete examples when $β(v)\ne0$ and more than three hundred when $β(v)=0$ that we gathered from the literature and from Sloane's OEIS database. The limit laws and the convergence rates we worked out are almost all new and include normal, half-normal, Rayleigh, beta, Poisson, negative binomial, Mittag-Leffler, Bernoulli, etc., showing the surprising richness and diversity of such a simple framework, as well as the power of the approaches used.