In recent years, Alexandersson and others proved combinatorial formulas for the Schur function expansion of the horizontal-strip LLT polynomial $G_λ(x;q)$ in some special cases. We associate a weighted graph $Π$ to $λ$ and we use it to express a linear relation among LLT polynomials. We apply this relation to prove an explicit combinatorial Schur-positive expansion of $G_λ(x;q)$ whenever $Π$ is triangle-free. We also prove that the largest power of $q$ in the LLT polynomial is the total edge weight of our graph.
LLT polynomials are $q$-analogues of product of Schur functions that are known to be Schur-positive by Grojnowski and Haiman. However, there is no known combinatorial formula for the coefficients in the Schur expansion. Finding such a formula also provides Schur positivity of Macdonald polynomials. On the other hand, Haiman and Hugland conjectured that LLT polynomials for skew partitions lying on $k$ adjacent diagonals are $k$-Schur positive, which is much stronger than Schur positivity. In this paper, we prove the conjecture for $k=2$ by analyzing unicellular LLT polynomials. We first present…
We give a combinatorial formula for LLT cumulants of unicellular unilevelled shapes in terms of parking functions and Cayley trees. Our formula implies previously conjectured Schur positivity.
In this work, we generalize and utilize the linear relations of LLT polynomials introduced by Lee \cite{Lee}. By using the fact that the chromatic quasisymmetric functions and the unicellular LLT polynomials are related via plethystic substitution and thus they satisfy the same linear relations, we can apply the linear relations to both sets of functions. As a result, in the chromatic quasisymmetric function side, we find a class of $e$-positive graphs, called \emph{melting lollipop graphs}, and explicitly prove the $e$-unimodality. In the unicellular LLT side, we obtain Schur expansion formul…
We prove that two horizontal-strip LLT polynomials are equal if the associated weighted graphs defined by the author in a previous paper are isomorphic. This provides a sufficient condition for equality of horizontal-strip LLT polynomials and yields a well-defined LLT polynomial indexed by a weighted graph. We use this to prove some new relations between LLT polynomials and we explore a connection with extended chromatic symmetric functions.
The purpose of this note is to introduce a new family of quasi-symmetric functions called LLT cumulants and discuss its properties. We define LLT cumulants using the algebraic framework for conditional cumulants and we prove that the Macdonald cumulant has an explicit positive expansion in terms of LLT cumulants of ribbon shapes, generalizing the classical decomposition of Macdonald polynomials. We also find a natural combinatorial interpretation of the LLT cumulant of a given directed graph as a weighted generating function of colorings of its subgraphs. We use this graph theoretical framewor…
We make a systematic study of a new combinatorial construction called a dual equivalence graph. We axiomatize these graphs and prove that their generating functions are symmetric and Schur positive. By constructing a graph on ribbon tableaux which we transform into a dual equivalence graph, we give a combinatorial proof of the symmetry and Schur positivity of the ribbon tableaux generating functions introduced by Lascoux, Leclerc and Thibon. Using Haglund's formula for the transformed Macdonald polynomials, this also gives a combinatorial formula for the Schur expansion of Macdonald polynomial…
In this article we prove the $e$-positivity of $G_{\mathbfν}[X;q+1]$ when $G_{\mathbfν}[X;q]$ is a vertical strip LLT polynomial. This property has been conjectured by Alexandersson and Panova, and by Garsia, Haglund, Qiu and Romero, and it implies several $e$-positivities conjectured by them and also by Bergeron. We make use of a result of Carlsson and Mellit that shows that a vertical strip LLT polynomial can be obtained by applying certain compositions of operators of the Dyck path algebra to the constant $1$. Our proof gives in fact an algorithm to expand these symmetric functions in the e…
In 2007 Sami Assaf introduced dual equivalence graphs as a method for demonstrating that a quasisymmetric function is Schur positive. The method involves the creation of a graph whose vertices are weighted by Ira Gessel's fundamental quasisymmetric functions so that the sum of the weights of a connected component is a single Schur function. In this paper, we improve on Assaf's axiomatization of such graphs, giving locally testable criteria that are more easily verified by computers. We further advance the theory of dual equivalence graphs by describing a broader class of graphs that correspond…
We define a D_0 graph to be a graph whose vertex set is a subset of permutations of n, with edges of the form ...bac... <--> ...bca... or ...acb... <--> ...cab... (Knuth transformations), or ...bac... <--> ...acb... or ...bca... <--> ...cab... (rotation transformations), such that whenever the Knuth and rotation transformations at positions i-1, i, i+1 are available at a vertex, exactly one of these is an edge. The generating function of such a graph is the sum of the quasisymmetric functions associated to the descent sets of its vertices. Assaf studied D_0 graphs in the paper *Dual equivalenc…
We use a Dyck path model for unit-interval graphs to study the chromatic quasisymmetric functions introduced by Shareshian and Wachs, as well as vertical strip --- in particular, unicellular LLT polynomials. We show that there are parallel phenomena regarding $e$-positivity of these two families of polynomials. In particular, we give several examples where the LLT polynomials behave like a "mirror image" of the chromatic quasisymmetric counterpart. The Dyck path model is also extended to circular arc digraphs to obtain larger families of polynomials. This circular extensions of LLT polynomials…
We prove that the combinatorial side of the "Rational Shuffle Conjecture" provides a Schur-positive symmetric polynomial. Furthermore, we prove that the contribution of a given rational Dyck path can be computed as a certain skew LLT polynomial, thus generalizing the result of Haglund, Haiman, Loehr, Remmel and Ulyanov. The corresponding skew diagram is described explicitly in terms of a certain (m,n)-core.
We prove a positive combinatorial formula for the Schur expansion of LLT polynomials indexed by a 3-tuple of skew shapes. This verifies a conjecture of Haglund. The proof requires expressing a noncommutative Schur function as a positive sum of monomials in Lam's algebra of ribbon Schur operators. Combining this result with the expression of Haglund, Haiman, and Loehr for transformed Macdonald polynomials in terms of LLT polynomials then yields a positive combinatorial rule for transformed Macdonald polynomials indexed by a shape with 3 columns.
We describe a Yang-Baxter integrable vertex model, which can be realized as a degeneration of a vertex model introduced by Aggarwal, Borodin, and Wheeler. From this vertex model, we construct a certain class of partition functions that we show are essentially equal to the super ribbon functions of Lam. Using the vertex model formalism, we give proofs of many properties of these polynomials, namely a Cauchy identity and generalizations of known identities for supersymmetric Schur polynomials.
We conjecture an explicit positive combinatorial formula for the expansion of unicellular LLT polynomials in the elementary symmetric basis. This is an analogue of the Shareshian-Wachs conjecture and previously studied by Panova and the author in 2018. We show that the conjecture for unicellular LLT polynomials implies a similar formula for vertical-strip LLT polynomials. We prove positivity in the elementary basis in for the class of graphs called `melting lollipops' previously considered by Huh, Nam and Yoo. This is done by proving a curious relationship between a generalization of charge an…
We introduce the notion of the cutting strip of an outside decomposition of a skew shape, and show that cutting strips are in one-to-one correspondence with outside decompositions for a given skew shape. Outside decompositions are introduced by Hamel and Goulden and are used to give an identity for the skew Schur function that unifies the determinantal expressions for the skew Schur functions including the Jacobi-Trudi determinant, its dual, the Giambelli determinant and the rim ribbon determinant due to Lascoux and Pragacz. Using cutting strips, one obtains a formula for the number of outside…
In this paper we describe the thickened strips and the outside nested decompositions of any skew shape $λ/μ$. For any such decomposition $Φ=(Θ_1,Θ_2,\ldots,Θ_g)$ of the skew shape $λ/μ$ where $Θ_i$ is a thickened strip for every $i$, if $r$ is the number of boxes that are contained in any two distinct thickened strips of $Φ$, we establish a determinantal formula of the function $s_{λ/μ}(X)p_{1^r}(X)$ with the Schur functions of thickened strips as entries, where $s_{λ/μ}(X)$ is the Schur function of the skew shape $λ/μ$ and $p_{1^r}(X)$ is the power sum symmetric function index by the partitio…
Lusztig's fake degree is the generating polynomial for the major index of standard Young tableaux of a given shape. Results of Springer and James & Kerber imply that, mysteriously, its evaluation at a $k$-th primitive root of unity yields the number of border strip tableaux with all strips of size $k$, up to sign. This is essentially the special case of the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule for evaluating an irreducible character of the symmetric group at a rectangular partition. We refine this result to standard Young tableaux and border strip tableaux with a given number of descents. To do so, we intr…
In this text we introduce and analyze families of symmetric functions arising as partition functions for colored fermionic vertex models associated with the quantized affine Lie superalgebra $U_q \big( \widehat{\mathfrak{sl}} (1 | n) \big)$. We establish various combinatorial results for these vertex models and symmetric functions, which include the following. (1) We apply the fusion procedure to the fundamental $R$-matrix for $U_q \big( \widehat{\mathfrak{sl}} (1 | n) \big)$ to obtain an explicit family of vertex weights satisfying the Yang-Baxter equation. (2) We define families of symmetric…
The k-Schur functions were first introduced by Lapointe, Lascoux and Morse (2003) in the hopes of refining the expansion of Macdonald polynomials into Schur functions. Recently, an alternative definition for k-Schur functions was given by Lam, Lapointe, Morse, and Shimozono (2010) as the weighted generating function of starred strong tableaux which correspond with labeled saturated chains in the Bruhat order on the affine symmetric group modulo the symmetric group. This definition has been shown to correspond to the Schubert basis for the affine Grassmannian of type A by Lam (2008), and, at t …
We derive combinatorial identities, involving the Bernoulli and Euler numbers, for the numbers of standard Young tableaux of certain skew shapes. This generalizes the classical formulas of D. Andre on the number of up-down permutations. The analysis uses a transfer operator approach extending the method of Elkies, combined with an identity expressing the volume of a certain polytope in terms of a Schur function.
Our work deals with symmetric rational functions and probabilistic models based on the fully inhomogeneous six vertex (ice type) model satisfying the free fermion condition. Two families of symmetric rational functions $F_λ,G_λ$ are defined as certain partition functions of the six vertex model, with variables corresponding to row rapidities, and the labeling signatures $λ=(λ_1\ge \ldots\ge λ_N)\in \mathbb{Z}^N$ encoding boundary conditions. These symmetric functions generalize Schur symmetric polynomials, as well as some of their variations, such as factorial and supersymmetric Schur polynomi…
