An algorithm for computing plethysm coefficients (Q1381839): Difference between revisions

Plethysm is a composition operation on symmetric functions introduced by D. E. Littlewood [see, for instance, \textit{I. G. Macdonald}, Symmetric functions and Hall polynomials. 2nd ed. (1995; Zbl 0824.05059)]. The plethysm \(P[Q]\) of two polynomials \(P\) and \(Q\) is a polynomial obtained by substituting the monomials of \(Q\) as arguments of \(P\). It is well known that for two Schur functions \(s_{\lambda}(x)\) and \(s_{\mu}(x)\) where \(\lambda\) and \(\mu\) are partitions of weight \(m\) and \(n\), respectively, \(s_{\lambda}[s_{\mu}] = \sum c_{\lambda, \mu}^{\gamma} s_{\gamma}(x)\) where \(\gamma\) runs over all partitions of \(n \cdot m\) and where the \(c_{\lambda, \mu}^{\gamma}\) are non-negative integer coefficients. Despite a huge literature there did not exist a formula to compute these coefficients [see, for instance, \textit{Y. M. Chen, A. M. Garsia} and \textit{J. Remmel}, Combinatorics and algebra, Proc. Conf., Boulder/Colo. 1983, Contemp. Math. 34, 109-153 (1984; Zbl 0556.20013)]. Here the author proves such a formula and describes and proves an algorithm to calculate the coefficients. A sufficient condition on \(\lambda, \mu\) and \(\gamma\) is given which ensures that \(c_{\lambda, \mu}^{\gamma} = 0\).