Upper bounds for the Stanley-Wilf limit of 1324 and other layered patterns

Abstract: We prove that the Stanley-Wilf limit of any layered permutation pattern of length $\ell$ is at most $4\ell^2$, and that the Stanley-Wilf limit of the pattern 1324 is at most 16. These bounds follow from a more general result showing that a permutation avoiding a pattern of a special form is a merge of two permutations, each of which avoids a smaller pattern. If the conjecture is true that the maximum Stanley-Wilf limit for patterns of length $\ell$ is attained by a layered pattern then this implies an upper bound of $4\ell^2$ for the Stanley-Wilf limit of any pattern of length $\ell$. We also conjecture that, for any $k\ge 0$, the set of 1324-avoiding permutations with $k$ inversions contains at least as many permutations of length $n+1$ as those of length $n$. We show that if this is true then the Stanley-Wilf limit for 1324 is at most $e^{\pi\sqrt{2/3}} \simeq 13.001954$.