Partitions and Compositions defined by inequalities

S. Corteel, C. D. Savage

Published 2003-09-05Version 1

We consider sequences of integers defined by a system of linear inequalities with integer coefficients. We show that when the constraints are strong enough to guarantee that all the entries are nonnegative, the generating function for the integer solutions of weight $n$ has a finite product form. The results are proved bijectively and are used to give several examples of interesting identities for integer partitions and compositions. The method can be adapted to accommodate equalities along with inequalities and can be used to obtain multivariate forms of the generating function. We show how to extend the technique to obtain the generating function when some coefficients are allowed to be rational, generalizing the case of lecture hall partitions. Our initial results were conjectured thanks to the Omega package.