Coefficients in some Young derived sequences (Q2563522)

The authors continue their study of combinatorics and asymptotics associated with sequences \(\psi=\{\psi_n\}_{n\geq0}\), where \(\psi_n\) is a character of the symmetric group \(S_n\). The central notion of the present paper is that of the Young derived sequence \(y(\psi)\) introduced by the second author [Adv. Math. 106, No. 2, 169-197 (1994; Zbl 0819.20013)]. The asymptotic behaviour of the degrees of the characters in these sequences is applied to the evaluation of generalisations of the Mehta integral \[ \int\Biggl(\prod_{i<j}|x_i-x_j|\Biggl)^{2z}\exp((-x^2_1-\cdots-x^2_k)/2)dx_1\cdots dx_k \] (see the second author [Adv. Math. 41, 115-136 (1981; Zbl 0509.20009)]). Character sequences form a commutative ring under the obvious sum and the convolution product \(\psi\circ\phi\). This is the sequence whose \(n\)th term is the sum \(\sum^n_{j=0}\psi_j\phi_{n-j}\) of outer products of the terms of the sequences \(\psi\) and \(\phi\). (The outer product is the representation of \(S_n\) induced from the tensor product representation of the subgroup \(S_j\times S_{n-j}\) (see Chapter 2.3 of \textit{G. D. James} and \textit{A. Kerber} [The representation theory of the symmetric group, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. (1991; Zbl 0491.20010)]).) The Young derived sequence is formed by taking the convolution product of the given sequence with the sequence whose \(n\)th term is the trivial character of \(S_n\). A basic construction used by the authors in probabilistic arguments is that of \(q\)-column dilation, where \(q\) is an integer \(\geq 2\). This operation replaces the partition \(\lambda\) by the partition \(\lambda^q\), which is formed by repeating each part of \(\lambda\) \(q\) times. The natural correspondence between partitions of \(n\) and irreducible characters of \(S_n\) yields a corresponding notion of the \(q\)-column dilation \(\psi^q\) of the character sequence \(\psi\). The main result is a formula which enables the coefficients expressing the terms of the \(l\)th Young derived sequence \(y^l(\psi^q)\) as sums of irreducible characters to be calculated, given the corresponding data for the sequence \(\psi\) and the number of certain semi-standard tableaux with entries in the set \(\{1,\dots,l\}\). The proof is combinatorial, and is based on a careful analysis of the effect of Young's rule on \(q\)-dilated diagrams.