Ribbon operators and Hall-Littlewood symmetric functions (Q5927529)

A ribbon is a connected skew partition diagram which contains no \(2\times 2\) blocks. For every ribbon, the author defines a symmetric function operator \(S^R\) which acts combinatorially on the Schur functions. There is a known symmetric function which acts on the Hall-Littlewood symmetric functions \(H_\lambda[X;q]\) by adding a row to the partition \(\lambda\) [cf. \textit{N. Jing}, Vertex operators and Hall-Littlewood symmetric functions, Adv. Math. 87, No. 2, 226-248 (1991; Zbl 0742.16014)]. If the cells of a ribbon are numbered sequentially from left to right and top to bottom, the ribbon has a descent at \(i\) when cell \(i+1\) is below cell \(i\), and the major index \(\text{ maj}(R)\) is the sum of the descents. The author proves many properties of the ribbon operators, and shows that the operator \[ H_{1^k}^q = \sum_R q^{{n\choose 2}-\text{maj}(R)}S^R, \] where the sum is over all \(2^{k-1}\) ribbons of size \(k\), adds a column to the partition \(\lambda\) in \(H_\lambda[X;q]\).