A Littlewood-Richardson rule for Macdonald polynomials (Q1925741)

The paper provides an explicit combinatorial description for the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients \(c_{\lambda,\mu}^{\nu}(q,t)\) for Macdonald polynomials \[ P_{\lambda}P_{\mu}=\sum_{\nu}c_{\lambda,\mu}^{\nu}(q,t)P_{\nu}. \] The coefficients \(c_{\lambda,\mu}^{\nu}(q,t)\) are expressed as sums of certain rational functions assigned to the alcove walks contained in the dominant chamber. A similar product formula is presented for the nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials \(E_{\lambda}\). All these results hold for the Macdonald polynomials of general Lie-type. \textit{A. Ram} [Pure Appl. Math. Q. 2, No. 4, 963--1013 (2006; Zbl 1127.20005)] defined a notion of an alcove walk and used it to relate the Littelmann path model with the affine Hecke algebra. Later, \textit{A. Ram} and the author [Adv. Math. 226, No. 1, 309--331 (2011; Zbl 1291.05210)] used the alcove walk model to expand the nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials \(E_{\lambda}\) in the monomial basis \(X_{\mu}\). The present paper uses the double affine Hecke algebra \(\widetilde{H}\) as the main technical tool. The key result is Theorem 3.3, which allows one to rewrite the product of monomials and intertwining operators in \(\widetilde{H}\) as a product of intertwining operators only. Using this theorem and the representation of \(E_{\lambda}\) in terms of intertwining operators, the author expands the product \(X_{\mu}E_{\lambda}\) in the basis \(E_{\lambda}\), with the coefficients, as above, being sums of explicit rational functions over alcove walks. Combining all these results together, the author computes the coefficients of the product \(E_{\mu}P_{\lambda}\) in the basis \(E_{\mu}\). A suitable symmetrization of this result allows the author to express the product \(P_{\mu}P_{\lambda}\) in the basis \(P_{\mu}\), yielding an analogue of the Littlewood-Richardson formula. The rest of the paper is dedicated to various combinatorial consequences: Pieri-type formulas, degenerations to Hall-Littlewood polynomials and various examples explicitly showing the alcove walks involved in the computations and the corresponding weights for them.