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Lecture Hall Partitions

Recall that if λ=(λ1,λ2,λN) is a partition of the positive integer n, i.e. n=λ1+λ2++λN, then the convention is to arrange the parts so that λ1λ2λN1.

For a given positive integer N (the number of "rows" in the "lecture hall"), a lecture-hall partition of the integer n is a collection of non-negative integers λ=(λ1,λ2,λN) such that (1) holds, and λ1Nλ2N1λN10. Note in particular that for lecture hall partitions, some of the λi may be 0.

Let LN denote the set of all such lecture hall partitions, i.e., LN:={(λ1,λ2,λN)|λ1Nλ2N1λN10}, and for any positive integer, let lN(n) denote the number of lecture hall partitions of n in LN: lN(n):=|{(λ1,λ2,λN)LN|λ1+λ2++λN=n}|.

Lecture hall partitions were introduced by Bousquet-Mélou and Eriksson in [1], where they showed that the generating function for the sequence {lN(n)}n=0 (by convention, lN(0)=1) had closed form given by n=0lN(n)qn=Nj=111q2j1.

A survey of extensions and developments in the theory may be found in the paper [2] by Carla Savage.

[1] Mireille Bousquet-Mélou and Kimmo Eriksson. Lecture hall partitions. Ramanujan J., 1(1), 101–111, 1997.

[2] Carla D. Savage, The mathematics of lecture hall partitions. J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 144 (2016), 443–475.

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