The zrank conjecture and restricted Cauchy matrices (Q2575026)

A border strip decomposition of a skew partition \(\lambda/\mu\) is a decomposition into a union of pairwise disjoint border strips, i.e. connected skew partitions each containing no \(2\times 2\) square. The rank of a skew partition \(\lambda/\mu\), denoted \(\text{rank}(\lambda/\mu)\), is the number of border strips in a minimal such decomposition. Let \(s_{\lambda/\mu}(1^{t})\) denote the skew Schur function \(s_{\lambda/\mu}\) evaluated at \(x_{1}=\cdots=x_{t}=1\), \(x_{i}=0\) for \(i>t\). The zrank of \(\lambda/\mu\), denoted \(\text{zrank}(\lambda/\mu)\), is the exponent of the largest power of \(t\) dividing \(s_{\lambda/\mu}(1^{t})\). \textit{R. P. Stanley} [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 100, 349-375 (2002; Zbl 1018.05105)] conjectured that \(\text{rank}(\lambda/\mu)=\text{zrank}(\lambda/\mu)\). The authors show that this conjecture is valid for any skew partition if and only if any restricted Cauchy matrix is nonsingular (Theorem 5.2). A key element in the proof is to use a determinantal formula of \textit{A. M. Hamel} and \textit{I. P. Goulden} [Eur. J. Comb. 16, 461-477 (1995; Zbl 0832.05097)] to obtain a combinatorial description of \(y(\lambda/\mu)= (t^{-\text{rank}(\lambda/\mu)} s_{\lambda/\mu}(1^{t}))_{t=0}\) in terms of an interval set (Theorem 4.3). They conclude by showing that several classes of restricted Cauchy matrices are nonsingular, which provides some evidence for the conjecture.