Bottom Schur functions (Q1773187)

Summary: We give a basis for the space spanned by the sum \(\widehat{s}_\lambda\) of the lowest degree terms in the expansion of the Schur symmetric functions \(s_\lambda\) in terms of the power sum symmetric functions \(p_\mu\), where deg\((p_i)=1\). These lowest degree terms correspond to minimal border strip tableaux of \(\lambda\). The dimension of the space spanned by \(\widehat{s}_\lambda\), where \(\lambda\) is a partition of \(n\), is equal to the number of partitions of \(n\) into parts differing by at least 2. Applying the Rogers-Ramanujan identity, the generating function also counts the number of partitions of \(n\) into parts \(5k+1\) and \(5k-1\). We also show that a symmetric function closely related to \(\widehat{s}_\lambda\) has the same coefficients when expanded in terms of power sums or augmented monomial symmetric functions.