Roberto Civino (Università degli studi dell'Aquila) – Unrefinable partitions into distinct parts

Notes: extra seminar this week on an unusual day (Friday); no seminar next week.

Unrefinable partitions, arising quite unexpectedly in a combinatorial problem in group theory, represent a special subset of integer partitions into distinct parts, constrained by an additional additive relationship between the parts. Despite being a natural combinatorial object, they remain relatively unexplored in the literature, with only a few known properties and results.

In this talk, we explore the foundational aspects of unrefinable partitions, showing some of their initial properties. We will present an algorithm designed to efficiently test for unrefinability in a given partition. By establishing a bound on the largest part in such partitions, we introduce the concept of maximal unrefinable partitions, a subclass with its own distinctive structure. We will show how to count such maximal unrefinable partitions using explicit bijections, providing a clearer understanding of their combinatorial structure.