Hall-Littlewood vertex operators and generalized Kostka polynomials (Q5937632)

After a brief overview of the Hopf algebra of symmetric functions, vertex operators are defined, which in certain cases specialize to either Garsia's version of Jing's Hall-Littlewood vertex operators, the repeated application of Schur function vertex operators introduced by Bernstein, or multiplication by Schur functions. That these operators are a good generalization is strongly supported by the fact that they have the same relation to generalized Kostka polynomials as Garsia's vertex operators have to the Kostka-Foulkes polynomials, and identities developed for these operators correspond naturally to known identities among generalized Kostka polynomials. Other results include relating spaces of certain vertex operators via commutation relations, showing the linear independence of these operators, and explicit formulae for the operators.