A bijection between noncrossing and nonnesting partitions of types A and B

Ricardo Mamede

Published 2008-10-08, updated 2009-03-11Version 2

The total number of noncrossing partitions of type $\Psi$ is the $n$th Catalan number $\frac{1}{n+1}\binom{2n}{n}$ when $\Psi=A_{n-1}$, and the binomial $\binom{2n}{n}$ when $\Psi=B_n$, and these numbers coincide with the correspondent number of nonnesting partitions. For type A, there are several bijective proofs of this equality, being the intuitive map that locally converts each crossing to a nesting one of them. In this paper we present a bijection between nonnesting and noncrossing partitions of types A and B that generalizes the type A bijection that locally converts each crossing to a nesting.