A short proof of the Littlewood-Richardson rule (Q1266354): Difference between revisions

The Littlewood-Richardson rule is a combinatorial rule for computing the multiplicities of the irreducible characters of \(\text{GL}_n\) in the product of two irreducible polynomial characters. In an equivalent (and generalized) form, it is a combinatorial rule for computing the scalar product of two skew Schur functions. (The generalized form is due to \textit{A. V. Zelevinsky} [J. Algebra 69, 82-94 (1981; Zbl 0464.20010)].) The author gives a one and a half page proof of this generalized form, which relies on nothing else but the combinatorial description of skew Schur functions in terms of tableaux and the Jacobi-Trudi identity. The key in the proof is a sign-reversing involution, which is very similar to the Bender-Knuth involution that combinatorially shows the symmetry of skew Schur functions.