On the arithmetic product of combinatorial species

Manuel Maia, Miguel Mendez

Published 2005-03-21, updated 2005-04-29Version 2

We introduce two new binary operations with combinatorial species; the arithmetic product and the modified arithmetic product. The arithmetic product gives combinatorial meaning to the product of Dirichlet series and to the Lambert series in the context of species. It allows us to introduce the notion of multiplicative species, a lifting to the combinatorial level of the classical notion of multiplicative arithmetic function. Interesting combinatorial constructions are introduced; cloned assemblies of structures, hyper-cloned trees, enriched rectangles, etc. Recent research of Cameron, Gewurz and Merola, about the product action in the context of oligomorphic groups, motivated the introduction of the modified arithmetic product. By using the modified arithmetic product we obtain new enumerative results. We also generalize and simplify some recent results of Canfield, and Pittel, related to the enumerations of tuples of partitions with restricted meet.