A positive proof of the Littlewood-Richardson rule using the octahedron recurrence (Q1883681)

Summary: We define the hive ring, which has a basis indexed by dominant weights for \(\text{GL}_n(\mathbb C)\), and structure constants given by counting hives [\textit{A. Knutson} and \textit{T. Tao}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 12, 1055--1090 (1999; Zbl 0944.05097) and ibid. 17, 19--48 (2004; Zbl 1043.05111)] (or equivalently honeycombs, or BZ patterms [\textit{A. D. Berenshtein} and \textit{A. V. Zelevinskii}, Sov. Math., Dokl. 37, 799--802 (1988); translation from Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 300, 1291--1294 (1988; Zbl 0674.20024)]). We use the octahedron rule from [\textit{D. P. Robbins} and \textit{H. Rumsey jun.}, Adv. Math. 62, 169--184 (1986; Zbl 0611.15008)] to prove bijectively that this ``ring'' is indeed associative. This, and the Pieri rule, give a self-contained proof that the hive ring is isomorphic as a ring-with-basis to the representation ring of \(\text{GL}_n(\mathbb C)\). In the honeycomb interpretation, the octahedron rule becomes ``scattering'' of the honeycombs. This recovers some of the ``crosses and wrenches'' diagrams from \textit{D. Speyer's} very recent preprint [Perfect matchings and the octahedron recurrence, preprint May 2003], whose results we use to give a closed form for the associativity bijection.