Some unexpected properties of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients (Q2094877)

In this paper the authors define a family of partitions called near-rectangular as follows: Let \(\Lambda_{n}\) = \(\{\lambda_{1} \geq \cdots \geq \lambda_{n} \geq 0 : \lambda_i \in \mathbb{Z}\}\) be the set of partitions with at most \(n\) parts. A partition \(\lambda \in \Lambda_{n}\) is said to be near-rectangular if \(\lambda = \lambda_{1}\lambda_{2}^{n-2}\lambda_{n}\) for some integers \(\lambda_{1} \geq \lambda_{2}\geq \lambda_{n}\); that is, if \(\lambda_{2} =\cdots = \lambda_{n-1}\). They introduce and give evidence for a conjectural identity between Littlewood-Richardson coefficients when one partition is near-rectangular. That is, if \(\lambda\) is a near-rectangular partition and \(\mu\) any partition, the irreducible decompositions of \(V_{n}(\lambda)\otimes V_{n}(\mu)\) and \(V_{n}(\lambda)^{\ast} \otimes V_{n}(\mu)\) coincide up to some unknown bijection, where \(V_{n}(\lambda)\) denotes the irreducible \(GL_{n}(\mathbb{C})\)-representation corresponding to \(\lambda\). This conjecture is proved if \(\mu\) is also near-rectangular. The authors also report some computational evidence for the conjecture.