An invitation to the generalized saturation conjecture (Q558617)

The paper under review is based on a series of lectures given by the author during the years 1998 through 2003 concerning the interrelations between the saturation properties of the Littlewood-Richardson numbers and their several generalizations, parabolic \(q\)-Kostant partition functions and parabolic Kostka polynomials. Recall that a function \(f:\Omega\to \mathbb Z\), \(\Omega\subset{\mathbb Z}^n\), satisfies the saturation property on \(\Omega\) if the condition \(f(N\omega)\not=0\) for some \(N\geq 1\) and \(\omega\in \Omega\) implies \(f(\omega)\not=0\). The famous saturation conjecture (now a theorem) states that the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients \(c_{\lambda\mu}^{\nu}\) satisfy the saturation property. For a composition \(\nu=(\nu_1,\dots,\nu_p)\) of \(n\), \(\nu_p>0\) (a sequence of nonnegative integers with sum \(n\)) and a sequence of integers \(\gamma=(\gamma_1,\dots,\gamma_n)\), \(|\gamma|=0\), the parabolic \(q\)-Kostant partition function \(K_{\Phi(\eta)}(\gamma| q)\) is defined via the decomposition \[ \prod_{(i,j)\in\Phi(\eta)}(1-qx_i/x_j)^{-1}=\sum_{\gamma}K_{\Phi(\eta)}(\gamma| q)x^{\gamma}, \] where the sum runs over all \(\gamma\in{\mathbb Z}^n\), \(|\gamma|=0\), and \(\Phi(\eta)\) is the subset of all \((i,j)\in{\mathbb Z}^2\) such that \(1\leq i\leq \eta_1+\cdots+\eta_r\leq j\leq n\) for some \(r=1,\dots,p\). The parabolic Kostka polynomials \(K_{\lambda\mu\nu}(q)\), \(\lambda\) being a partition and \(\mu=(\mu_1,\dots,\mu_k)\), \(\eta\) compositions, \(|\lambda|=|\mu|\), \(|\eta|=n\), \(k\leq n\), may be defined by \[ K_{\lambda\mu\nu}(q)=\sum_{w\in\Sigma_n}(-1)^{l(w)}K_{\Phi(\eta)}(w(\lambda+\delta)-\mu-\delta| q), \] where \(\delta=(n-1,n-2,\dots,1,0)\), \(\Sigma_n\) is the symmetric group and \(l(w)\) is the length of the permutation \(w\in\Sigma_n\). They generalize the usual Kostka-Foulkes polynomials \(K_{\lambda\mu}(q)\), the elements of the transition matrix from the Schur functions to the Hall-Littlewood functions. The paper contains a selection of results, interesting examples, about 15 problems and 30 conjectures. It is well written and will be useful both for the experts in the field and for the general mathematical audience with interests in combinatorics.