COMBINATORIAL PROOF FOR THE POSITIVITY OF THE ORBIT POLYNOMIAL

The cyclic group $Cn={\langle}(12{\cdots}n){\rangle}$ acts on the set ($^{[n]}_k$) of all $k$-subsets of [$n$]. In this action of $C_n$ the number of orbits of size $d$, for $d|n$, is $$O^{n,k}_d=\frac{1}{d}\sum_{\frac{n}{d}|s|n}{\mu}(\frac{ds}{n})(^{n/s}_{k/s})$$. Stanton and White[7] generalized the above identity to construct the orbit polynomials $$O^{n,k}_d(q)=\frac{1}{[d]_{q^{n/d}}}\sum_{\frac{n}{d}|s|n}{\mu}(\frac{ds}{n})[^{n/s}_{k/s}]{_q}^s$$ and conjectured that $O^{n,k}_d(q)$ have non-negative coefficients. In this paper we give a combinatorial proof for the positivity of coefficients of the orbit polynomial $O^{n,3}_d(q)$.