Content evaluation and class symmetric functions (Q1886578)

Given a partition \(\mu\), the central character \(\omega_\mu\) evaluated at a partition \(\lambda\) of \(n\) is a normalization of the irreducible character \(\chi^\lambda\) of the symmetric group \(\mathcal G_n\) evaluated at a permutation \(\sigma\) of reduced cycle type \(\mu\): \(\omega^\lambda_\mu=\frac{| \mathcal C_\mu(n)| }{f(\lambda)}\chi^\lambda(\sigma)\), where \(\mathcal C_\mu(n)\) is the conjugacy class of permutations of reduced cycle type \(\mu\) and \(f(\lambda)\) is the dimension of the irreducible representation indexed by \(\lambda\). For \(\mu=(1)\) we have the expression \(\omega^\lambda_1=\sum_{(i,j)\in\lambda}(j-i)\), where \((i,j)\) are the positions in the Ferrers diagram of \(\lambda\) and \(j-i\) are the contents of \(\lambda\). Katriel conjectured an expression for \(\omega^\lambda_r\), and the authors use his idea of content evaluation to obtain an expression for \(\omega^\lambda_\mu\) if \(\mu\) is any partition. Their main result (Theorem 3.1) shows that for each partition \(\mu\), there exists a class symmetric functions, denoted \(\omega_\mu(\underline x)\), such that when \(\omega_\mu\) is evaluated on the contents of a partition \(\lambda\) we obtain the central character \(\omega^\lambda_\mu\). These functions form a new basis for the algebra \(\Lambda\) of symmetric functions over \(\mathbb Q(n)\), and this gives an ismorphism between \(\Lambda\) and the Farahat-Higman algebra FH which governs products of conjugacy classes in the centre \(\mathcal Z_n\) of the group algebra of \(\mathcal G_n\). We thus obtain a polynomial calculus of all connexion coefficients of \(\mathcal Z_n\) inside \(\mathcal G_n\), not just the top coefficients obtained by Macdonald. This result allows a study of content evaluation of symmetric functions which shows (Corollary 4.1) that, given a family of rational values \((a_\lambda)\) indexed by partitions \(\lambda\) of \(n\), there exists a unique symmetric polynomial \(f(x_1,\dots,x_n)\) such that \(f(C(\lambda))=a_\lambda\), where \(C(\lambda)\) is the multiset of contents of \(\lambda\); and (Theorem 4.1) that \(e_k(\underline x)=\sum_\nu\omega_\nu(\underline x)\) where \(e_k(\underline x)\) are the elementary symmetric functions and \(\nu\) runs through partitions of \(k\). The authors also use their results to obtain known results about the asymptotic and ordinary enumeration of skew Young tableaux (Proposition 5.1) and semi-standard tableaux (Proposition 5.2). Finally, the results are extended to Hecke algebras.