k-Marked Dyson Symbols and Congruences for Moments of Cranks

William Y. C. Chen, Kathy Q. Ji, Erin Y. Y. Shen

Published 2013-12-07Version 1

By introducing $k$-marked Durfee symbols, Andrews found a combinatorial interpretation of $2k$-th symmetrized moment $\eta_{2k}(n)$ of ranks of partitions of $n$. Recently, Garvan introduced the $2k$-th symmetrized moment $\mu_{2k}(n)$ of cranks of partitions of $n$ in the study of the higher-order spt-function $spt_k(n)$. In this paper, we give a combinatorial interpretation of $\mu_{2k}(n)$. We introduce $k$-marked Dyson symbols based on a representation of ordinary partitions given by Dyson, and we show that $\mu_{2k}(n)$ equals the number of $(k+1)$-marked Dyson symbols of $n$. We then introduce the full crank of a $k$-marked Dyson symbol and show that there exist an infinite family of congruences for the full crank function of $k$-marked Dyson symbols which implies that for fixed prime $p\geq 5$ and positive integers $r$ and $k\leq (p-1)/2$, there exist infinitely many non-nested arithmetic progressions $An+B$ such that $\mu_{2k}(An+B)\equiv 0\pmod{p^r}$.