The Theta Conjecture

Abstract

We define a diagonal-inversion statistic on labeled Dyck paths carrying both decorated rises and decorated contractible valleys. This gives an explicit candidate for a bivariate refinement of the univariate Theta conjecture of D'Adderio, Iraci, and Vanden Wyngaerd, recently proved by D'Adderio, Pagaria, and the authors of this work. The univariate conjecture can be recovered from our bivariate version by setting $q=1$. The new conjecture recovers the rise and valley versions of the Delta conjecture when either decoration parameter vanishes, and provides a combinatorial interpretation of the symmetric function $Θ_{e_l} Θ_{e_k}\nabla e_{n-k-l}$, which is also conjectured to be the Frobenius characteristic of a certain graded module of diagonal coinvariants with two sets of commuting variables and two sets of anticommuting variables. In support of the Theta conjecture and its touching refinement, we prove its Schröder case, that is, the scalar product of the symmetric function side with $e_{n-d} h_d$ matches the combinatorial side restricted to Schröder paths. The proof uses a finer combinatorial argument than the previously known cases, leveraging two Gaussian product identities.