A note on plethysm (Q1118029)

In 1950 H. O. Foulkes conjectured that, for \(m\geq n\), the following is true for certain permutation characters of symmetric groups, induced from wreath products of symmetric groups: \[ IS_ m\wr S_ n\uparrow S_{mn}\subseteq IS_ n\wr S_ m\uparrow S_{mn}. \] (I denotes the identity representation, \(S_ m\wr S_ n\) means the wreath product of order \(m!^ nn!\), and \(\subseteq\) indicates that \(\leq\) is true for the multiplicities of the irreducibles.) The present paper contains the proof of an interesting theorem which says that this conjecture holds if the following matrix \(M^{m,n}:=(M^{m,n}_{t,s})\) is of rank \((mn)!/(m!^ nn!):\) Row and column index t, s of the matrix run through the dissections t (s) of \(\{\) 1,...,mn\(\}\) into subsets of order m (n), respectively, and, if \(t_ i\) \((s_ i)\) denotes the ith element of the dissection t (s), respectively, then the corresponding matrix entry is defined as follows: \(M^{m,n}_{t,s}:=1\) if \(| s_ i\cap t_ j| =1\), for \(1\leq i\leq n\), \(1\leq j\leq m\), \(M^{m,n}_{t,s}=0\) otherwise.