Homomesy in Products of Two Chains

Many invertible actions τ on a set S of combinatorial objects, along with a natural statistic f on S, exhibit the following property which we dub homomesy: the average of f over each τ-orbit in S is the same as the average of f over the whole set S. This phenomenon was first noticed by Panyushev in 2007 in the context of the rowmotion action on the set of antichains of a root poset; Armstrong, Stump, and Thomas proved Panyushev's conjecture in 2011. We describe a theoretical framework for results of this kind that applies more broadly, giving examples in a variety of contexts. These include linear actions on vector spaces, sandpile dynamics, Suter's action on certain subposets of Young's Lattice, Lyness 5-cycles, promotion of rectangular semi-standard Young tableaux, and the rowmotion and promotion actions on certain posets. We give a detailed description of the latter situation for products of two chains.