Littlewood-Richardson rules for Grassmannians (Q1826881)

One of the equivalent forms of the classical Littlewood-Richardson rule describes the structure constants obtained when the cup product of two Schubert classes in the cohomology ring of a complex Grassmannian is written as a linear combination of Schubert classes. In the paper under review the authors give a short and self-contained argument which shows that this rule is a direct consequence of the Pieri formula [\textit{M. Pieri}, Lomb. Ist. Rend. (2) XXVI. 534--546 (1893), XXVII. 258--273 (1894; JFM 25.1038.02)] for the product of a Schubert class with a special Schubert class. The Littlewood-Richardson rule has a generalization [\textit{J. R. Stembridge}, Adv. Math. 74, No. 1, 87--134 (1989; Zbl 0677.20012)] for the Grassmannians which parametrize maximal isotropic subspaces of \({\mathbb C}^n\) equipped with a symplectic or orthogonal form. The same arguments work equally well in more difficult cases and give a simple derivation of the rule of Stembridge from the analogues of the Pieri formula in [\textit{H. Hiller} and \textit{B. Boe}, Adv. Math. 62, 49--67 (1986; Zbl 0611.14036)].