Identities and positivity conjectures for some remarkable operators in the theory of symmetric functions (Q1582340)

Let \(J_\mu [X;q,t]\) be the integral form of the Macdonald polynomial and set \[ \widetilde{H}_\mu[X;q,t]=t^{n(\mu)} J_\mu[X/(1-1/t);q,1/t)],\text{ where }n(\mu)=\sum_i(i-1)\mu_i. \] This paper focusses on the linear operator \(\nabla\) defined by setting \(\nabla \widetilde{H}_\mu=t^{n(\mu)}q^{n(\mu')}\widetilde{H}_\mu\). This operator occurs naturally in the study of the Garsia-Haiman modules \(M_\mu\). It was originally introduced by the first two authors to give elegant expressions to Frobenius characteristics of intersections of these modules. However, it was soon discovered that it plays a powerful and ubiquitous role throughout the theory of Macdonald polynomials. The authors' main result here is a proof that \(\nabla\) acts integrally on symmetric functions. An important corollary of this result is the Schur integrality of the conjectured Frobenius characteristic of the diagonal harmonic polynomials. Another curious aspect of \(\nabla\) is that it appears to encode a \(q,t\)-analogue of Lagrange inversion. In particular, its specialization at \(t=1\) (or \( q=1)\) reduces to the \(q\)-analogue of Lagrange inversion studied by Andrews, Garsia and Gessel. The authors present here a number of positivity conjectures that have emerged in the few years since \(\nabla\) has been discovered. They also prove a number of identities in support of these conjectures and state some of the results that illustrate the power of \(\nabla\) within the theory of Macdonald polynomials.