A human proof of Gessel’s lattice path conjecture
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- by A. Bostan, I. Kurkova and K. Raschel PDF
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Abstract:
Gessel walks are lattice paths confined to the quarter plane that start at the origin and consist of unit steps going either West, East, South-West or North-East. In 2001, Ira Gessel conjectured a nice closed-form expression for the number of Gessel walks ending at the origin. In 2008, Kauers, Koutschan and Zeilberger gave a computer-aided proof of this conjecture. The same year, Bostan and Kauers showed, again using computer algebra tools, that the complete generating function of Gessel walks is algebraic. In this article we propose the first “human proofs” of these results. They are derived from a new expression for the generating function of Gessel walks in terms of Weierstrass zeta functions.References
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Additional Information
- A. Bostan
- Affiliation: INRIA Saclay Île-de-France, Bâtiment Alan Turing, 1 rue Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves, 91120 Palaiseau, France
- MR Author ID: 725685
- Email: Alin.Bostan@inria.fr
- I. Kurkova
- Affiliation: Laboratoire de Probabilités et Modèles Aléatoires, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France
- Email: Irina.Kourkova@upmc.fr
- K. Raschel
- Affiliation: CNRS & Fédération de recherche Denis Poisson & Laboratoire de Mathématiques et Physique Théorique, Université de Tours, Parc de Grandmont, 37200 Tours, France
- MR Author ID: 915164
- Email: Kilian.Raschel@lmpt.univ-tours.fr
- Received by editor(s): March 25, 2014
- Received by editor(s) in revised form: February 12, 2015
- Published electronically: April 14, 2016
- © Copyright 2016 American Mathematical Society
- Journal: Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 369 (2017), 1365-1393
- MSC (2010): Primary 05A15; Secondary 30F10, 30D05
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/tran/6804
- MathSciNet review: 3572277