Cylindric skew Schur functions

From MaRDI portal
Publication:2503365



Abstract: Cylindric skew Schur functions, which are a generalisation of skew Schur functions, arise naturally in the study of P-partitions. Also, recent work of A. Postnikov shows they have a strong connection with a problem of considerable current interest: that of finding a combinatorial proof of the non-negativity of the 3-point Gromov-Witten invariants. After explaining these motivations, we study cylindric skew Schur functions from the point of view of Schur-positivity. Using a result of I. Gessel and C. Krattenthaler, we generalise a formula of A. Bertram, I. Ciocan-Fontanine and W. Fulton, thus giving an expansion of an arbitrary cylindric skew Schur function in terms of skew Schur functions. While we show that no non-trivial cylindric skew Schur functions are Schur-positive, we conjecture that this can be reconciled using the new concept of cylindric Schur-positivity.


The cylinder \({\mathfrak C}_{vu}\), \(u,v\) integers, is defined as the quotient of the integer lattice \({\mathbb Z}^2\) modulo the shifting action which sends \((i,j)\) to \((i-u,j+v)\). This is a poset which inherits the partial order generated by the relations \((i,j)<(i+1,j)\) and \((i,j)<(i,j+1)\). A cylindric skew shape \(C\) is a finite convex subposet of \({\mathfrak C}_{vu}\). One defines semistandard cylindric tableaux of shape \(C\) and cylindric skew Schur functions \(s_C(x)\). It turns out that the \(s_C(x)\) are symmetric functions for any cylindric skew shape \(C\). The author shows that cylindric skew Schur functions arise naturally in the study of \((P,\omega)\)-partitions. Another reason to investigate them is the recent work of A. Postnikov which shows a strong connection with the problem to find a combinatorial proof of the non-negativity of the 3-point Gromov-Witten invariants. The author gives an expansion of an arbitrary cylindric skew Schur function in terms of skew Schur functions and studies \(s_C(x)\) from the point of view of Schur-positivity. He shows that \(s_C(x)\) is Schur-positive only in the trivial case when \(C\) is isomorphic to a skew shape. Finally the author introduces the new concept of cylindric Schur-positivity and proposes the conjecture that cylindric skew Schur functions are cylindric Schur-positive.




Cited in
(25)








This page was built for publication: Cylindric skew Schur functions

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2503365)