Critical classes, Kronecker products of spin characters, and the Saxl conjecture (Q1649926)

This paper is a contribution to the study of the \textit{Kronecker problem} for the symmetric groups, which asks for the decomposition into irreducible of the product of two irreducible characters of the symmetric group. This problem has been studied for a very long time, but there is still a great deal to find out. A special case concerns the product of a character with itself; a conjecture of \textit{G. Heide} et al. [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 106, No. 4, 908--930 (2013; Zbl 1372.20017)] asserts that if $n\neq2,4,9$ then there is an irreducible character $\chi$ of $\mathfrak S_n$ such that the Kronecker square $\chi^2$ contains every irreducible character at least once. In the case where $n$ is a triangular number $k(k+1)/2$, Saxl provides a candidate for $\chi$, namely the character labelled by the staircase partition $\rho_k=(k,k-1,\dots,1)$. Many characters are know to be contained in this Kronecker square, but the aim of the present paper is to extend this knowledge. This uses the surprising idea of \textit{spin} representations of $\mathfrak S_n$, i.e. representations of a Schur cover of $\mathfrak S_n$ that do not arise directly from linear representations of $\mathfrak S_n$. The Kronecker product of two spin representations is a linear representation. If we let $[\alpha]$ denote the linear representation labelled by the partition $\alpha$, and $\langle\alpha\rangle$ a spin representation labelled by $\alpha$ in the case where $\alpha$ is a strict partition, then an important result is that $\langle(n)\rangle\cdot\langle\rho_k\rangle$ is a scalar multiple of $[\rho_k]$. Hence $[\rho_k]^2$ has the same constituents as $\langle(n)\rangle^2\cdot\langle\rho_k\rangle^2$. $\langle(n)\rangle^2$ is known to be equal to the sum of the irreducible characters labelled by hook partitions, and so it is fruitful to study the Kronecker square $\langle\rho_k\rangle^2$, which is the main object here. Among other things, the author shows that if $\alpha$ is a $2$-row partition, then $[\alpha]$ is a constituent of $\langle\rho_k\rangle^2$. As a consequence of this, if $\beta$ is a double-hook (i.e. the union of a $2$-row partition and a $2$-column partition), then $[\beta]$ is a constituent of $[\rho_k]^2$. The proof is in a sense elementary, using character values. \par There are also some interesting data suggesting that almost all characters are constituents of $\langle\rho_k\rangle^2$. There is a discussion of a spin variant of Saxl's conjecture, which says that if $n$ is a square $k^2$ and $\tau_k=(2k-1,2k-3,\dots,3,1)$, then $\langle\tau_k\rangle^2$ contains all irreducible linear characters. \par The paper is really nicely written, and provides an excellent introduction to this subject as well as some significant results.