Abstract:   The spt-crank of a vector partition, or an S-partition, was introduced by Andrews, Garvan and Liang. Let N_S(m, n) denote the net number of S-partitions of n with spt-crank m, that is, the number of S-partitions (π₁, π₂, π₃) of n with spt-crank m such that the length of π₁ is odd minus the number of S-partitions (π₁, π₂, π₃) of n with spt-crank m such that the length of π₁ is even. Andrews, Dyson and Rhoades conjectured that {N_S(m, n)}_m is unimodal for any n, and they showed that this conjecture is equivalent to an inequality between the rank and crank of ordinary partitions. They obtained an asymptotic formula for the difference between the rank and crank of ordinary partitions, which implies N_S(m, n) ≥ N_S (m + 1, n) for sufficiently large n and fixed m. In this paper, we introduce a representation of an ordinary partition, called the m-Durfee rectangle symbol, which is a rectangular generalization of the Durfee symbol introduced by Andrews. We give a proof of the conjecture of Andrews, Dyson and Rhoades. For m ≥ 1, we construct an injection from the set of ordinary partitions of n such that m appears in the rank-set to the set of ordinary partitions of n with rank not less than -m. For m = 0, we need to construct three more injections. We also show that this conjecture implies an inequality between the positive rank and crank moments obtained by Andrews, Chan and Kim.

  AMS Classification:  05A17, 11P82, 11P83

  Keywords:   rank, crank, spt-crank, Andrews' spt-function, rank moment, crank moment

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