Stanley symmetric functions and quiver varieties (Q1840616)

This paper relates a formula for quiver varieties found by \textit{A. S. Buch} and \textit{W. Fulton} [Invent. Math. 135, 665-687 (1999; Zbl 0942.14027)] to Stanley symmetric functions. A Stanley symmetric function is a symmetric homogeneous power series in infinitely many variables used to determine how many reduced words a given permutation has. The connection between the two is found using Schubert polynomials. Let \(w\in S_{m}.\) A Stanley symmetric function has been shown to be a limit of Schubert polynomials [\textit{A. Lascoux} and \textit{M.-P. Schützenberger}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I 294, 447-450 (1982; Zbl 0495.14031) and \textit{I. G. MacDonald}, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 166, 73-99 (1991; Zbl 0784.05061)]: Such a polynomial can be written using Schur functions as a basis---the coefficients are denoted \(\alpha _{w\lambda }\) where \(\lambda \) is a partition of the length of \(w\). The quiver variety formula given in the author's previous work specializes to the double Schubert polynomial for the permutation \(w.\) The coefficients of this double Schubert polynomial are denoted \(c_{w}(a,b,\lambda),\) where \(a\) and \(b\) are exponents. The \(c_{w}(a,b,\lambda)\) are special cases of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. The author shows that the constant term \(c_{w}(0,0,\lambda)\) corresponds to Stanley's coefficient \(\alpha _{w^{-1}\lambda },\) thereby directly relating the double Schubert polynomial and the symmetric function. The first half of the paper is a review of the ideas found in the author's previous paper cited above. After proving that \(c_{w}(0,0,\lambda)=\alpha _{w^{-1}\lambda },\) the results are related to the Littlewood-Richardson conjecture, a conjecture which states that generalized Littlewood-Richardson coefficients are nonnegative.