The combinatorics of symmetric functions and permutation enumeration of the hyperoctahedral group (Q1356523)

The author defines a ring homomorphism \(\zeta \) from the \(B_{n}\)-analog of symmetric functions to \(\mathbb{Q}[x]\) in analogy with the work of F. Brenti in [Pac. J. Math. 157, No. 1, 1-28 (1993; Zbl 0805.05089)] for the \(A_{n}\) case. The images of the standard bases under this homomorphism can be described in terms of various statistics on signed permutations along with the one-dimensional irreducible characters for \(B_{n}\). In particular, \(d_{B}(\sigma)\) and \(de_{B}(\sigma)\) are defined to be the number of descents and number of decedances in the signed permutation \(\sigma\). The decedance statistic is apparently new, it is roughly the number of descents in the cycles of \(\sigma\). The two fundamental formulas state \[ 2^{n}n! \zeta(h_{n}(X + \overline{X}) = \sum_{\sigma \in B_{n}} x^{d_{B}(\sigma)} \] \[ 2^{n}n! \zeta(p_{\lambda}(X)p_{\mu}(\overline{X})) = z_{\lambda}z_{\mu} \sum_{\sigma \in B_{n}(\lambda, \mu)} x^{de_{B}(\sigma)} \] where \(X\) and \(\overline{X}\) are two distinct copies of the same alphabet, and \(B_{n}(\lambda, \mu)\) is the conjugacy class of type \((\lambda, \mu)\). The proofs are purely combinatorial arguments based on producing a sign reversing involution on single row \(\alpha\)-brick tabloids.