The first term in the expansion of plethysm of Schur functions (Q1348156)

The plethysm of two Schur functions is a symmetric function which expresses the character of the composition of two irreducible polynomial representations of general linear groups and is a sum of Schur functions with nonnegative integer coefficients. Up to now no explicit formula is known for these coefficients and, in the general case, the coefficients can be obtained only as a result of heavy computations. Recently the author presented a new algorithm for determining the coefficients individually [see Discrete Math. 180, No. 1-3, 391-402 (1998; Zbl 0895.05065)]. The algorithm is more efficient when one knows the partitions corresponding to Schur functions with nonzero coefficients in the decomposition of the plethysm. In particular, the knowledge of the first and the last nonzero term with respect to the reverse lexicographic ordering of partitions would speed up the calculations significantly. The purpose of the present paper is to obtain some general results for these terms. The author presents a lot of cases when the partition corresponding to the first term is given explicitly and the coefficient is equal to unity. The results are based on combinatorial properties of nested inverse Kostka numbers.