Kazhdan-Lusztig immanants and products of matrix minors (Q855336)

Since its introduction in 1979, the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis of the Hecke algebra \(H_n(q)\) has found many applications. One of them, due to \textit{M. Haiman} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 6, 569--595 (1993; Zbl 0817.20048)], clarifies three nonnegativity properties of certain polynomials which arise in the representation theory of \(H_n(q).\) These nonnegativity properties can be associated with families of polynomials arising in the study of inequalities satisfied by minors of totally nonnegative matrices. Let \(I\) and \(I'\) be \(k\)-element subsets of \(\left\{ 1, \dots n \right\},\) and let \(X\) be an \(n\)-square matrix. \(\Delta_{I,I'}(X)\) denotes the \((I,I')\)-minor of \(X,\) i. e. the determinant of the submatrix of \(X\) corresponding to rows \(I\) and to columns \(I'.\) In general, if \(f: S_n \rightarrow {\mathbb C},\) the \(f\)-immanant of \(X = (x_{ij})\) is defined by \[ \text{ Imm}_f(X) := \sum_{w \in S_n} f(w) \, x_{1,w(1)} \cdot \dots \cdot x_{n,w(n)}. \] A special type of immanants is of the form \[ (*) \quad \Delta_{J,J'}(X) \Delta_{\overline{J}, \overline{J}'}(X) - \Delta_{I,I'}(X) \Delta_{\overline{I}, \overline{I}'}(X), \] where \(\overline{I}\) denotes the complement of \(I\) in \(\left\{ 1, \dots, n \right\}.\) The authors introduce the so-called \textit{Kazhdan-Lusztig immanants} and discuss their nonnegativity properties. They show that these unify all classes of totally nonnegative immanants introduced earlier. In particular, they prove that all totally nonnegative immanants of the form (*) are also Schur nonnegative and they apply this fact to problems concerning Schur functions. In the closing sections of the paper, determinant-like properties of the Kazhdan-Lusztig immanants are considered and a couple of open problems related to the cones of totally resp. monomial resp. Schur nonnegative immanants are stated.