On Signed Multiplicities of Schur Expansions Surrounding Petrie Symmetric Functions

Abstract: For

k g e 1

, the homogeneous symmetric functions

G (k, m)

of degree

m

defined by

are called emph{Petrie symmetric functions}. As derived by Grinberg and Fu--Mei independently, the expansion of

G (k, m)

in the basis of Schur functions

s_{l a m b d a}

turns out to be signed multiplicity free, i.e., the coefficients are

- 1

,

0

and

1

. In this paper we give a combinatorial interpretation of the coefficient of

s_{l a m b d a}

in terms of the

k

-core of

l a m b d a

and a sequence of rim hooks of size

k

removed from

l a m b d a

. We further study the product of

G (k, m)

with a power sum symmetric function

p_{n}

. For all

n g e 1

, we give necessary and sufficient conditions on the parameters

k

and

m

in order for the expansion of

G (k, m) c d o t p_{n}

in the basis of Schur functions to be signed multiplicity free. This settles affirmatively a conjecture of Alexandersson as the special case

n = 2

.

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