Bell Polynomials and $k$-generalized Dyck Paths

Abstract

A {\em k-generalized Dyck path} of length $n$ is a lattice path from $(0,0)$ to $(n,0)$ in the plane integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}$ consisting of horizontal-steps $(k, 0)$ for a given integer $k\geq 0$, up-steps $(1,1)$, and down-steps $(1,-1)$, which never passes below the x-axis. The present paper studies three kinds of statistics on $k$-generalized Dyck paths: "number of $u$-segments", "number of internal $u$-segments" and "number of $(u,h)$-segments". The Lagrange inversion formula is used to represent the generating function for the number of $k$-generalized Dyck paths according to the statistics as a sum of the partial Bell polynomials or the potential polynomials. Many important special cases are considered leading to several surprising observations. Moreover, enumeration results related to $u$-segments and $(u,h)$-segments are also established, which produce many new combinatorial identities, and specially, two new expressions for Catalan numbers.