Upper triangular linear relations on multiplicities and the Stanley-Stembridge conjecture (Q2161202)

Summary: \textit{P. Brosnan} and \textit{T. Y. Chow} [Adv. Math. 329, 955--1001 (2018; Zbl 1410.05222)], and independently \textit{M. Guay-Paquet} [``A second proof of the Shareshian-Wachs conjecture, by way of a new Hopf algebra'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1601.05498}], proved the Shareshian-Wachs conjecture [\textit{J. Shareshian} and \textit{M. L. Wachs}, Adv. Math. 295, 497--551 (2016; Zbl 1334.05177)], which links the Stanley-Stembridge conjecture in combinatorics to the geometry of Hessenberg varieties through Tymoczko's permutation group action [\textit{J. S. Tymoczko}, Contemp. Math. 460, 365--384 (2008; Zbl 1147.14024)] on the cohomology ring of regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties. In previous work, the authors exploited this connection to prove a graded version of the Stanley-Stembridge conjecture in a special case. In this manuscript, we derive a new set of linear relations satisfied by the multiplicities of certain permutation representations in Tymoczko's representation. We also show that these relations are upper-triangular in an appropriate sense, and in particular, they uniquely determine the multiplicities. As an application of these results, we prove an inductive formula for the multiplicity coefficients corresponding to partitions with a maximal number of parts.