1. Introduction
The Fubini polynomials
are defined by the generating function
are called Fubini numbers. The Fubini polynomials
have the following explicit expressions [
1]
where
are the Stirling numbers of the second kind. The Fubini polynomials of two variables
are defined by the generating function
satisfying the following identity [
1,
2]
The Fubini polynomials
of order
r and the Fubini polynomials
of order
r of two variables are defined by the generating function
respectively. Kim, T. et al. [
3] proved the identity
where
.
The Euler polynomials
are defined by the generating function [
4,
5]
It is clear that if taking
in (
1) and
in (
8), then from (
1) and (
8) we can get the Euler number.
Fubini numbers and polynomials, along with their many generalizations, play important roles in mathematics, with applications spanning combinatorics, analysis, and number theory. These include combinatorial calculations, the evaluation of infinite series and power sums, and the study of zeta function values. Owing to this broad utility, they have been extensively studied, as referenced in [
3,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14].
Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. [
12] considered the computational problem of Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials and proved that, for any positive integers
n and
k, one has the identity
where the summation is taken over all
k-dimensional nonnegative integer coordinates
such that
. The sequence
is defined as follows: For any positive integer
k and integers
and
for all
providing
if
As applications of the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials, Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. discussed the congruence identities of Fubini polynomials and Euler numbers and posed the following conjectures.
Conjecture 1. For odd prime p, we have the congruence Conjecture 2. For any positive integer n and odd prime p, we have the congruence Chen, G. and Chen, L. [
13] generalized the results of Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. to the case of two variables, and proved that, for any positive integers
n and
k, one has the identity
where
is a polynomial defined by
,
, and
for all integers
and
l with
.
However, Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. [
12] and Chen, G. and Chen, L. [
13] only provided recurrence relations for the coefficients
and the coefficient polynomials
, respectively, without giving their explicit expressions.
Motivated by these works, we explore several identities involving Fubini polynomials. We use Hoppe’s formula to derive several identities that relate the powers and derivatives of the generating function for Fubini polynomials. As applications, we obtain several identities involving Fubini polynomials-including identities for Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials, the explicit expressions of the coefficients
and the coefficient polynomials
. These results refine and extend those of Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. [
12] and Chen, G. and Chen, L. [
13]. Furthermore, we prove conjectures mentioned above, and also derive several congruence identities for Fubini numbers.
Our method is different from those of Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. [
12] and Chen, G. and Chen, L. [
13]. It is worth noting that giving the explicit expressions of
and
naturally provides solutions to the difference equations with initial conditions in (
11) and (
15), respectively.
We first use the following Hoppe’s formula for the n-th derivative of a composite function [
15]
where
to derive two identities establishing the relationship between the powers and derivatives of generating functions for Fubini polynomials in the following two theorems.
Theorem 1. (Main Theorem 1).
Let and then we have Theorem 2. (Main Theorem 2).
Let and then we havewhere are the Stirling numbers of the first kind. Then we generalize these two theorems to the case of two variables. The results are given in the following two theorems and one corollary.
Theorem 3. Let and then we havewhere are the r-Stirling numbers of the first kind. Corollary 1. Let and then we have Theorem 4. Let and then we havewhere are the r-Stirling numbers of the second kind. Some contents and properties of Stirling numbers can be found in reference [16,17]. Using the above identities for generating functions and the power series expansion method, we can easily obtain the following identities involving Fubini polynomials.
Corollary 2. We have the following alternative explicit expression for the Fubini polynomialsand an identity Corollary 3. We have the following identity Theorem 5. Let then we have Theorem 6. (Inverse formula).
Let and then we have Theorem 7. For Fubini polynomials of two variables, we have
Theorem 8. For Fubini polynomials of two variables, we have Using the above identities for generating functions and the power series expansion method, we investigate a computational problem similar to those of Equations (
10) and (
14), and obtain identities for Sums of Products of one-variable and two-variable Fubini polynomials of order r.
Theorem 9. For the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of order r, we have the identitywhere Corollary 4. For the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials, we have the identity
Corollary 5. For the Sums of Products of Fubini numbers of high order, we have the identity
where
Theorem 10. For the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of high order of two variables, we have the identitywhereand Corollary 6. For the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of two variables, we have the identitywhere Remark 1. By comparing Equations (10) and (31), it is evident that and thus we obtain So Corollary 4 gives the explicit expression of the coefficients in (10), and naturally provides solutions to the difference equations with initial conditions in (11). Remark 2. We have provided the explicit expressions of coefficients , and our method is based on Hoppe’s formula, not induction. This result improves the result of the paper of Zhao, J. and Chen, Z. [12] and can be used to prove the conjectures mentioned above. Remark 3. By comparing Equations (14) and (34), it is evident that Corollary 6 gives the explicit expression of the coefficients polynomials, in (14), and naturally provides solutions to the difference equations with initial conditions in (15). Our result improves the result of the paper of Chen, G. and Chen, L. [13]. Difference equations play an important role in research in combinatorics; for some recent work, see [18,19] Next we prove the previously mentioned two conjectures, which are stated in the following two theorems.
Theorem 11. For odd prime p, we have the congruence Theorem 12. For any positive integer n and odd prime p, one has the congruence Finally, from the identities for Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials, we can obtain a congruence identity for Fubini numbers.
Theorem 13. For odd prime p, we have the congruence identitywhere Remark 4. Using the identities we have obtained, we can further explore the congruence properties of Fubini polynomials. However, due to space limitations, we omit the detailed discussion here.
Remark 5. We thank a reviewer for pointing out that a proof to Conjecture 1 has been given in [20]. That proof does not provide an explicit expression for , but instead uses mathematical induction combined with various properties of Fubini polynomials, resulting in a rather lengthy proof. In contrast, our approach differs distinctly: we do not use mathematical induction, but directly derive Identity (1.27), from which the coefficients can be immediately given explicitly. By the explicit expression for , we provide a concise proof of Conjecture 1. 3. Proofs of the Main Results on Identities Involving Fubini Polynomials
In this section, the proofs of all our main results will be completed.
Proof of Theorem 1 Let
where
, and
By Hoppe’s formulas (
16) and (
17) for the n-th derivative of a composite function, we have
where
we have
we have
where we have used the following identity (closed formula)
Then we have
where we have used the identity
and the identity (
40) in Lemma 2
This completes the proof of our theorem. □
Proof of Theorem 2. Let f
n and g
k By Theorem 1, we have
From Property (
39) and Property (
38) with
in Lemma 1, we obtain
i.e., we have
The theorem follows immediately. This completes the proof of our theorem. □
Proof of Theorem 3. Since
it follows that
From Theorem 2, we obtain
It follows that
where
In the last equality, we have applied Lemma 3. Then we obtain
The proof of the theorem is completed. □
Proof of Corollary 1. The corollary follows immediately from Theorem 3. □
Proof of Theorem 4. The theorem follows immediately from Theorem 3 and Equation (
38) in Lemma 1, as in the proof of Theorem 2. □
Proof of the Corollary 2. From the explicit expressions (
2), the proof of the corollary is completed. □
Proof of Corollary 3. Let
in (
24), then the corollary follows immediately. □
Proof of Theorem 5. From the definition of
and the properties of the power series we obtain
and on the other hand, by formula (
18) in Theorem 1, then we obtain
Comparing the coefficient of
we arrive at
This completes the proof of our theorem. □
Proof of Theorem 6. Comparing the coefficient of
we obtain
This completes the proof of the theorem. □
Proof of Theorem 7. From Theorem 3, the definitions of and , and the properties of the power series, the theorem follows immediately, as in the proof of Theorem 6. □
Proof of Theorem 8. From Theorem 4, the definitions of and , and the properties of the power series, the theorem follows immediately, as in the proof of Theorem 5. □
Proof of Theorem 9. The strategy of the proof is as follows. First, we use the generating function method to establish a relation between the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of high order and Fubini polynomials of high order. Then, we apply the relation between Fubini polynomials of high order and Fubini polynomials given in Theorem 6, which will yield the desired relation between the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of high order and Fubini polynomials. From the definition of
and the properties of the power series, we obtain
Let
and then we have
Thus we have
and on the other hand, we have
Comparing the coefficients of
in two identities above, we acquire
Using Theorem 6 and Equation (
7), we acquire the identity
This completes the proof of our theorem. □
Proof of Corollary 4. Let in Theorem 9, the corollary follows immediately. □
Proof of Corollary 5. Let in Theorem 9, the corollary follows immediately. □
Proof of Theorem 10. The strategy of the proof is as follows. First, we use the generating function method to establish a relation between the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of high order of two variables and Fubini polynomials of high order of two variables. Then, we apply the relation between Fubini polynomials of high order of two variables and Fubini polynomials of two variables given in Theorem 7, which will yield the desired relation between the Sums of Products of Fubini polynomials of high order of two variables and Fubini polynomials of two variables. Let
and
From Equation (
6), we have
and on the other hand, from Theorem 3 and Equation
, then we have
where
and then we have
Comparing the coefficients of
in Equations (
43) and (
44), and using Theorem 7, we get
Changing the characters used for variables, we get
Comparing the coefficients of
in Equations (
42) and (
45), and using Theorem 7, we get
This completes the proof of our theorem. □
Proof of Corollary 6. Let in Theorem 10, the corollary follows immediately. □
Proof of Theorem 11. (Proof of the Conjecture 1)
From the identity (
10), the identity (
31) and the identity
it is clear that
Let
and
, then we have
where we have used the result
which can be proved readily by the recurrence formula [
17,
21]
and the Property
In fact, let
in Equation (
46), we have
thus we have
This completes the proof of our theorem. □
Proof of Theorem 12. (Proof of the Conjecture 2)
From the identity (
27), we obtain
Let
then we obtain
From the identity (
7) with
,
and
we have
Thus we obtain
where we have used the identities:
(
and Wilson Theorem:
The proof of the theorem is completed. □
Proof of Theorem 13. Let
Corollary 5, we have
then we can easily obtain
The proof of the theorem is completed. □