European Journal of Combinatorics 27 (2006) 364–381 www.elsevier.com/locate/ejc A q-analog of the Seidel generation of Genocchi numbers Jiang Zenga, Jin Zhoub aInstitut Girard Desargues, Université Claude Bernard (Lyon I), 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France bCenter for Combinatorics, LPMC, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, People’s Republic of China Received 1 December 2004; accepted 4 January 2005 Available online 5 February 2005 Abstract Anewq-analog of Genocchi numbers is introduced through a q-analog of Seidel’s triangle associated with Genocchi numbers. It is then shown that these q-Genocchi numbers have interesting combinatorial interpretations in the classical models for Genocchi numbers such as alternating pistols, alternating permutations, non-intersecting lattice paths and skew Young tableaux. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Genocchi numbers G2n can be defined through their relation with Bernoulli 2n numbers G2n = 2(2 − 1)Bn or by their exponential generating function [16, p. 74–75]: 2t t2 t4 t6 t2n = t − + − 3 +···+(−1)n G +···. et + 1 2! 4! 6! 2n (2n)! However it is not straightforward to see from the above definition that G2n should be integers. It was Seidel [14] who first gave a Pascal type triangle for Genocchi numbers in the nineteenth century. Recall that the Seidel triangle for Genocchi numbers [4,5,18]isan E-mail addresses:
[email protected] (J. Zeng),
[email protected] (J. Zhou). 0195-6698/$ - see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ejc.2005.01.001 J. Zeng, J. Zhou / European Journal of Combinatorics 27 (2006) 364–381 365 Table 1 q-analog of Seidel’s triangle (gi, j (q))i, j≥1 array of integers (gi, j )i, j≥1 such that g1,1 = g2,1 = 1and g + , = g + , − + g , , for j = 1, 2,...,i + 1, 2i 1 j 2i 1 j 1 2i j (1) g2i, j = g2i, j+1 + g2i−1, j , for j = i, i − 1,...,1, where gi, j = 0if j < 0or j > i/2 by convention.