Cores of partitions in rectangles (Q6194240)

Summary: For a positive integer \(t \geqslant 2\), the \(t\)-core of a partition plays an important role in modular representation theory and combinatorics. We initiate the study of \(t\)-cores of partitions contained in an \(r\times s\) rectangle. Our main results are as follows. We first give a simple formula for the number of partitions in the rectangle that are themselves \(t\)-cores and compute its asymptotics for large \(r, s\). We then prove that the number of partitions inside the rectangle whose \(t\)-cores are a fixed partition \(\rho\) is given by a product of binomial coefficients. Finally, we use this formula to compute the distribution of the \(t\)-core of a uniformly random partition inside the rectangle extending our previous work on all partitions of a fixed integer \(n\) [Ann. Appl. Probab. 33, No. 1, 85--106 (2023; Zbl 1515.60037)]. In particular, we show that in the limit as \(r, s \to \infty\) maintaining a fixed aspect ratio, we again obtain a Gamma distribution with the same shape parameter \(\alpha = (t-1)/2\) and rate parameter \(\beta\) that depends on the aspect ratio.