The gamma-positivity of Eulerian polynomials and succession statistics

Abstract: This paper is concerned with multivariate refinements of the gamma-positivity of Eulerian polynomials by using the succession and fixed point statistics. Properties of the enumerative polynomials for permutations, signed permutations and derangements, including generating functions and gamma-positivity are studied, which generalize and unify earlier results of Athanasiadis, Brenti, Chow, Petersen, Roselle, Stembridge, Shin and Zeng. In particular, we derive a formula expressing the joint distribution of excedance number and negative number statistics over the type B derangements in terms of the derangement polynomials.