This analysis shows conditions ensuring log-concavity in triangular arrays of combinatorial sequences, suggesting broad applicability.
Recurrences of the form {equation*} T(n,k) = (αn+βk +γ) \ T(n-1,k) + (α'n+β'k+γ')\ T(n-1,k-1)+δn,0δk,0. {equation*} show up as the recurrence for many well-studied combinatorial sequences such as the Stirling numbers of first and second kind, the Lah numbers, Eulerian numbers etc. Recently, many of these sequences have received generalisations that obey a recurrence of the form {equation*} T(n,k) = (αn+βk +γ)^l \ T(n-1,k) + (α'n+β'k+γ')^l\ T(n-1,k-1)+δn,0δk,0. {equation*} where l is a positive integer. Many of these generalised sequences also satisfy properties such as unimodality, log-concavity, gamma-nonnegativity, real-rootedness that the original sequences satisfy. In this article, we give sufficient conditions for rows of triangular arrays, arising from the recurrence stated above, to be log-concave. We show that our sufficient condition is satisfied by many of the classical examples, thereby giving a new unified approach to proving their log-concavity. This sufficient condition also confirms a conjecture of Tankosic about the log-concavity of generalised Lah numbers. Our main technique will be to interpret the triangular array $(T(n,k))$ as weighted lattice paths and produce an injection that is increasing in weight. Finally, we introduce a two-parameter generalisation of the Eulerian numbers analogous to the generalised Stirling and Lah counterparts. We prove that this sequence is palindromic and make some remarks about their gamma-nonnegativity and real-rootedness.
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Umesh Shankar (2025) studied this question.
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