Motzkin paths, Motzkin polynomials and recurrence relations Roy Oste and Joris Van der Jeugt Department of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics Ghent University B-9000 Gent, Belgium
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[email protected] Submitted: Oct 24, 2014; Accepted: Apr 4, 2015; Published: Apr 21, 2015 Mathematics Subject Classifications: 05A10, 05A15 Abstract We consider the Motzkin paths which are simple combinatorial objects appear- ing in many contexts. They are counted by the Motzkin numbers, related to the well known Catalan numbers. Associated with the Motzkin paths, we introduce the Motzkin polynomial, which is a multi-variable polynomial “counting” all Motzkin paths of a certain type. Motzkin polynomials (also called Jacobi-Rogers polyno- mials) have been studied before, but here we deduce some properties based on recurrence relations. The recurrence relations proved here also allow an efficient computation of the Motzkin polynomials. Finally, we show that the matrix en- tries of powers of an arbitrary tridiagonal matrix are essentially given by Motzkin polynomials, a property commonly known but usually stated without proof. 1 Introduction Catalan numbers and Motzkin numbers have a long history in combinatorics [19, 20]. 1 2n A lot of enumeration problems are counted by the Catalan numbers Cn = n+1 n , see e.g. [20]. Closely related to Catalan numbers are Motzkin numbers M , n ⌊n/2⌋ n M = C n 2k k Xk=0 similarly associated to many counting problems, see e.g. [9, 1, 18]. For example, the number of different ways of drawing non-intersecting chords between n points on a circle is counted by the Motzkin numbers.