The Higher-order Stirling Triangles

Source abstract

The $r$th-order Stirling cycle and subset triangles and their associated quasi-Eulerian triangles were introduced by Deb and Sokal in their study of total positivity of combinatorial triangles. They found combinatorial interpretations for the cycle case in terms of Stirling permutations, leaving the subset case open. For $r\ge 2$, we resolve this problem by introducing the notion of Stirling subset permutations along with a consecutive-descent statistic. We also prove the conjectures of Deb and Sokal on the row log-concavity of the higher-order Stirling cycle and subset triangles. Our log-concavity proofs rely on Sagan's criterion, Dey's extension, and strengthened log-concavity inequalities discovered with the assistance of ChatGPT 5.6.