A uniform bijection between nonnesting and noncrossing partitions

Abstract

In 2007, D.I. Panyushev defined a remarkable map on the set of nonnesting partitions (antichains in the root poset of a finite Weyl group). In this paper we use Panyushev’s map, together with the well-known Kreweras complement, to construct a bijection between nonnesting and noncrossing partitions. Our map is defined uniformly for all root systems, using a recursion in which the map is assumed to be defined already for all parabolic subsystems. Unfortunately, the proof that our map is well defined, and is a bijection, is case-by-case, using a computer in the exceptional types. Fortunately, the proof involves new and interesting combinatorics in the classical types. As consequences, we prove several conjectural properties of the Panyushev map, and we prove two cyclic sieving phenomena conjectured by D. Bessis and V. Reiner.