The $q$-semicircular distribution is a probability law that interpolates between the Gaussian law and the semicircular law. There is a combinatorial interpretation of its moments in terms of matchings where $q$ follows the number of crossings, whereas for the free cumulants one has to restrict the enumeration to connected matchings. The purpose of this article is to describe combinatorial properties of the classical cumulants. We show that like the free cumulants, they are obtained by an enumeration of connected matchings, the weight being now an evaluation of the Tutte polynomial of a so-called crossing graph. The case $q=0$ of these cumulants was studied by Lassalle using symmetric functions and hypergeometric series. We show that the underlying combinatorics is explained through the theory of heaps, which is Viennot's geometric interpretation of the Cartier-Foata monoid. This method also gives a general formula for the cumulants in terms of free cumulants.

In the paper, we introduce a new concept, topological orbit dimension of an $n$-tuple of elements in a unital C$^{\ast}$-algebra. Using this concept, we conclude that Voiculescu's topological free entropy dimension of every finite family of self-adjoint generators of a nuclear C$^{\ast}$-algebra is less than or equal to $1$. We also show that the Voiculescu's topological free entropy dimension is additive in the full free product of some unital C$^{\ast}$-algebras. We show that the unital full free product of Blackadar and Kirchberg's unital MF algebras is also an MF algebra. As an application, we obtain that $\mathop{\textrm{Ext}}(C_{r}^{\ast}(F_{2})\ast_{\mathbb{C}}C_{r}^{\ast}(F_{2}))$ is not a group.

We introduce and study a remarkable family of real probability measures $\pi_{st}$ that we call free Bessel laws. These are related to the free Poisson law $\pi$ via the formulae $\pi_{s1}=\pi^{\boxtimes s}$ and ${\pi_{1t}=\pi^{\boxplus t}}$. Our study includes definition and basic properties, analytic aspects (supports, atoms, densities), combinatorial aspects (functional transforms, moments, partitions), and a discussion of the relation with random matrices and quantum groups.

The concept of $R$-diagonal element was introduced in \cite{NS2}, and was subsequently found to have applications to several problems in free probability. In this paper we describe a new approach to $R$-diagonality, which relies on freeness with amalgamation. The class of $R$-diagonal elements is enlarged to contain examples living in non-tracial $*$-probability spaces, such as the generalized circular elements of \cite{Sh1}.