On mesh patterns of short length: Equidistribution and enumeration

The classification and enumeration of short mesh patterns have emerged as two central directions in the area. We make substantial progress on both fronts. We construct an involution and a bijection that establish distributional equivalences for two classes of length-$2$ mesh patterns, thereby resolving a conjecture from 2019 and a recent conjecture. As a consequence, the best known upper bounds for the numbers of distribution-equivalence and Wilf-equivalence classes drop to $106$ and $47$, respectively. Combined with the known lower bounds of 105 and 46, conjectured to be exact, these results leave both classifications hinging on a single distribution-equivalence question conjectured in 2019, whose resolution would at once settle the remaining Wilf-equivalence case. We further conjecture that this unresolved equidistribution also holds for involutions, a subclass of all permutations. We also determine the distributions of three additional classes of length-$2$ mesh patterns through a detailed structural analysis. Our work combines bijective techniques with generating-function methods, yielding new insights into the structure and enumeration of short mesh patterns.