Remixed Eulerian numbers

Abstract

Abstract Remixed Eulerian numbers are a polynomial q-deformation of Postnikov’s mixed Eulerian numbers. They arose naturally in previous work by the authors concerning the permutahedral variety and subsume well-known families of polynomials such as q-binomial coefficients and Garsia–Remmel’s q-hit numbers. We study their combinatorics in more depth. As polynomials in q, they are shown to be symmetric and unimodal. By interpreting them as computing success probabilities in a simple probabilistic process we arrive at a combinatorial interpretation involving weighted trees. By decomposing the permutahedron into certain combinatorial cubes, we obtain a second combinatorial interpretation. At $q=1$ , the former recovers Postnikov’s interpretation whereas the latter recovers Liu’s interpretation, both of which were obtained via methods different from ours.