We define the_hive ring_, which has a basis indexed by dominant weights for GL(n), and structure constants given by counting hives [KT1] (or equivalently honeycombs, or Berenstein-Zelevinsky patterns [BZ1]). We use the octahedron rule from [Robbins-Rumsey,Fomin-Zelevinsky,Propp,Speyer] to prove bijectively that this "ring" is indeed associative.
This, and the Pieri rule, give a self-contained proof that the hive ring is isomorphic as a ring-with-basis to the representation ring of GL(n).
In the honeycomb interpretation, the octahedron rule becomes "scattering" of the honeycombs. This recovers some of the "crosses and wrenches" diagrams from the very recent preprint [S], whose results we use to give a closed form for the associativity bijection.
We give a survey on the Littlewood-Richardson rule. Using Gelfand-Tsetlin patterns as the main machinery of our analysis, we study the interrelationship of various combinatorial descriptions of the Littlewood-Richardson rule.
We give new bounds and asymptotic estimates for Kronecker and Littlewood--Richardson coefficients. Notably, we resolve Stanley's questions on the shape of partitions attaining the largest Kronecker and Littlewood--Richardson coefficients. We apply the results to asymptotics of the number of standard Young tableaux of skew shapes.
The classical Littlewood-Richardson coefficients C(lambda,mu,nu) carry a natural $S_3$ symmetry via permutation of the indices. Our "carton rule" for computing these numbers transparently and uniformly explains these six symmetries; previously formulated Littlewood-Richardson rules manifest at most three of the six.
We find and prove a factorization formula for certain Macdonald Littlewood-Richardson coefficients $c_{λμ}^ν(q,t)$. Namely, we consider the case that the Kostka number $K_{μ, ν-λ}$ is $1$. This settles a particular case of a more general conjecture of Richard Stanely. This conjecture proposes that a factorization formula exists whenever the corresponding regular Littlewood-Richardson coefficient $c^ν_{λμ}$ is $1$.
We present several direct bijections between different combinatorial interpretations of the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. The bijections are defined by explicit linear maps which have other applications.
We introduce a Littlewood-Richardson rule based on an algorithmic deformation of skew Young diagrams and present a bijection with the classical rule. The result is a direct combinatorial interpretation and proof of the geometric rule presented by Coskun. We also present a corollary regarding the Specht modules of the intermediate diagrams.
The main aim of the paper is to present a~combinatorial algorithm that, applying Littlewood-Richardson tableaux with entries equal to $1$, computes generic extensions of semisimple invariant subspaces of nilpotent linear operators. Moreover, we discuss geometric properties of generic extensions and their connections with combinatorics.
Following the methods used by Derksen-Weyman in \cite{DW11} and Chindris in \cite{Chi08}, we use quiver theory to represent the generalized Littlewood-Richardson coefficients for the branching rule for the diagonal embedding of $\gl(n)$ as the dimension of a weight space of semi-invariants. Using this, we prove their saturation and investigate when they are nonzero. We also show that for certain partitions the associated stretched polynomials satisfy the same conjectures as single Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. We then provide a polytopal description of this multiplicity and show that its…
Starting with Knutson and Tao's hive model (in J. Amer. Math. Soc., 1999) we characterize the Littlewood-Richardson coefficient $c_{λ,μ}^ν$ of given partitions $λ,μ,ν\in N^n$ as the number of capacity achieving hive flows on the honeycomb graph. Based on this, we design a polynomial time algorithm for deciding $c_{λ,μ}^ν>0$. This algorithm is easy to state and takes $O(n^3 \log ν_1)$ arithmetic operations and comparisons. We further show that the capacity achieving hive flows can be seen as the vertices of a connected graph, which leads to new structural insights into Littlewood-Richardson coe…
We prove a special case of a conjecture of Naito-Sagaki about a branching rule for the restriction of irreducible representations of $\mathfrak{sl}(2n,\mathbb{C})$ to $\mathfrak{sp}(2n,\mathbb{C})$. The conjecture is in terms of certain Littelmann paths, with the embedding given by the folding of the type $A_{2n-1}$ Dynkin diagram. We propose and motivate an approach to the conjecture in general, in terms of Littlewood-Richardson Sundaram tableaux.
We present a bijection between vacillating tableaux and pairs consisting of a standard Young tableau and an orthogonal Littlewood-Richardson tableau for the special orthogonal group $\mathrm{SO}(2k+1)$. This bijection is motivated by the direct-sum-decomposition of the $r$th tensor power of the defining representation of $\mathrm{SO}(2k+1)$. To formulate it, we use Kwon's orthogonal Littlewood-Richardson tableaux and introduce new alternative tableaux they are in bijection with. Moreover we use a suitably defined descent set for vacillating tableaux to determine the quasi-symmetric expansion o…
We present a polynomiality property of the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients c_{λμ}^ν. The coefficients are shown to be given by polynomials in λ, μand νon the cones of the chamber complex of a vector partition function. We give bounds on the degree of the polynomials depending on the maximum allowed number of parts of the partitions λ, μand ν. We first express the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients as a vector partition function. We then define a hyperplane arrangement from Steinberg's formula, over whose regions the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients are given by polynomials, and relate thi…
We present a Robinson-Schensted-Knuth type one-to-one correspondence between the set of pictures and the set of pairs of Littlewood-Richardson crystals.
We show that the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients are values at 1 of certain parabolic Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials for affine symmetric groups. These q-analogues of Littlewood-Richardson multiplicities coincide with those previously introduced in terms of ribbon tableaux.
Macdonald polynomials are orthogonal polynomials associated to root systems, and in the type A case, the symmetric kind is a common generalization of Schur functions, Macdonald spherical functions, and Jack polynomials. We use the combinatorics of alcove walks to calculate products of monomials and intertwining operators of the double affine Hecke algebra. From this, we obtain a product formula for Macdonald polynomials of general type.
Littlewood Richardson coefficients are structure constants appearing in the representation theory of the general linear groups ($GL_n$). The main results of this paper are: 1. A strongly polynomial randomized approximation scheme for certain Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. 2. A proof of approximate log-concavity of certain Littlewood-Richardson coefficients.
Based on the direct-sum-decomposition of the rth tensor power of the defining representation of the special orthogonal group SO(2k+1) one is interested in a bijective approach for determining the Frobenius characters of the isotypic components. In particular this leads us to a bijection between vacillating tableaux and pairs of standard Young tableaux and orthogonal Littlewood-Richardson tableaux, which we present for SO(3). Moreover we introduce the descent set of a vacillating tableau. As our bijection preserves this descent set, we also obtain the quasi-symmetric expansion of the Frobenius …
We develop structural insights into the Littlewood-Richardson graph, whose number of vertices equals the Littlewood-Richardson coefficient c(λ,μ,ν) for given partitions λ, μ, and ν. This graph was first introduced by Bürgisser and Ikenmeyer in arXiv:1204.2484, where its connectedness was proved. Our insights are useful for the design of algorithms for computing the Littlewood-Richardson coefficient: We design an algorithm for the exact computation of c(λ,μ,ν) with running time O(c(λ,μ,ν)^2 poly(n)), where λ, μ, and ν are partitions of length at most n. Moreover, we introduce an algorithm for d…
We use Hopf algebras to prove a version of the Littlewood-Richardson rule for skew Schur functions, which implies a conjecture of Assaf and McNamara. We also establish skew Littlewood-Richardson rules for Schur P- and Q-functions and noncommutative ribbon Schur functions, as well as skew Pieri rules for k-Schur functions, dual k-Schur functions, and for the homology of the affine Grassmannian of the symplectic group.
The Littlewood-Richardson (LR) coefficient counts among many other things the LR tableaux of a given shape and a given content. We prove, that the number of LR tableaux weakly increases if one adds to the shape and the content the shape and the content of another LR tableau. We also investigate the behaviour of the number of LR tableaux, if one repeatedly adds to the shape another shape with either fixed or arbitrary content. This is a generalisation of the stretched LR coefficients, where one repeatedly adds the same shape and content to itself.
Using a generalization of the Schensted insertion algorithm to rc-graphs, we provide a Littlewood-Richardson rule for multiplying certain Schubert polynomials by Schur polynomials.
An introduction is given to the Littlewood-Richardson rule, and various combinatorial constructions related to it. We present a proof based on tableau switching, dual equivalence, and coplactic operations. We conclude with a section relating these fairly modern techniques to earlier work on the Littlewood-Richardson rule.
We describe an explicit geometric Littlewood-Richardson rule, interpreted as deforming the intersection of two Schubert varieties so that they break into Schubert varieties. There are no restrictions on the base field, and all multiplicities arising are 1; this is important for applications. This rule should be seen as a generalization of Pieri's rule to arbitrary Schubert classes, by way of explicit homotopies. It has a straightforward bijection to other Littlewood-Richardson rules, such as tableaux, and Knutson and Tao's puzzles. This gives the first geometric proof and interpretation of the…
We consider the example from invariant theory concerning the conjugation action of the general linear group on several copies of the $n \times n$ matrices, and examine a symmetric function which stably describes the Hilbert series for the invariant ring with respect to the multigradation by degree. The terms of this Hilbert series may be described as a sum of squares of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. A "principal specialization" of the gradation is then related to the Hilbert series of the $\K$-invariant subring in the $\GL_n$-harmonic polynomials, where $\K$ denotes a block diagonal embe…
In this note, we study two generalizations of the Catalan numbers, namely the $s$-Catalan numbers and the spin $s$-Catalan numbers. These numbers first appeared in relation to quantum physics problems about spin multiplicities. We give a combinatorial description for these numbers in terms of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients, and explain some of the properties they exhibit in terms of Littlewood-Richardson polynomials.
J. DeLoera-T. McAllister and K. D. Mulmuley-H. Narayanan-M. Sohoni independently proved that determining the vanishing of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients has strongly polynomial time computational complexity. Viewing these as Schubert calculus numbers, we prove the generalization to the Littlewood-Richardson polynomials that control equivariant cohomology of Grassmannians. We construct a polytope using the edge-labeled tableau rule of H. Thomas-A. Yong. Our proof then combines a saturation theorem of D. Anderson-E. Richmond-A. Yong, a reading order independence property, and E. Tardos' algo…
We are interested in identities between Littlewood-Richardson coefficients, and hence in comparing different tensor product decompositions of the irreducible modules of the linear group GL n (C). A family of partitions-called near-rectangular-is defined, and we prove a stability result which basically asserts that the decomposition of the tensor product of two representations associated to near-rectangular partitions does not depend on n. Given a partition $λ$, of length at most n, denote by V n ($λ$) the associated simple GL n (C)-module. We conjecture that, if $λ$ is near-rectangular and $μ$…
The classical Littlewood-Richardson rule is a rule for computing coefficients in many areas, and comes in many guises. In this paper we prove two Littlewood-Richardson rules for symmetric skew quasisymmetric Schur functions that are analogous to the famed version of the classical Littlewood-Richardson rule involving Yamanouchi words. Furthermore, both our rules contain this classical Littlewood-Richardson rule as a special case. We then apply our rules to combinatorially classify symmetric skew quasisymmetric Schur functions. This answers affirmatively a conjecture of Bessenrodt, Luoto and van…
Littlewood-Richardson (LR) coefficients and Kostka Numbers appear in representation theory and combinatorics related to $GL_n$. It is known that Kostka numbers can be represented as special Littlewood-Rischardson coefficient. In this paper, we show how one can represent LR coefficient as a signed sum of Kostka numbers, and use the formulation to give a polynomial time algorithm for the same, hence showing that they belong to the same class of decision problems. As a corollary, we will prove Steinberg's formula using Kostant's partition function.
We compute with SageMath the group of all linear symmetries for the Littlewood-Richardson associated to the representations of $SL_3$. We find that there are 144 symmetries, more than the 12 symmetries known for the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients in general.
This note is an extended abstract of my talk at the workshop on Representation Theory and Symmetric Functions, MSRI, April 14, 1997. We discuss the problem of finding an explicit description of the semigroup $LR_r$ of triples of partitions of length $\leq r$ such that the corresponding Littlewood-Richardson coefficient is non-zero. After discussing the history of the problem and previously known results, we suggest a new approach based on the ``polyhedral'' combinatorial expressions for the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients.
Suppose μand μ' are two partitions. We will let μ\oplus μ' denote the "direct sum" of the partitions, defined as the sorted partition made of the parts of $μ$ and $μ'$. In this paper, we define a summation operation on two Littlewood-Richardson fillings of type (μ, ν;λ) and (μ', ν';λ'), which results in a Littlewood-Richardson filling of type (μ\oplus μ', ν\oplus ν' ;λ\oplus λ'). We give an algorithm to produce the sum, and show that it terminates in a Littlewood-Richardson filling by defining a bijection between a Littlewood-Richardson filling and a flow on a honeycomb, and then showing that …
We present a new characterization of the shape equivalent class and the Littlewood-Richardson correspondence of Young tableaux in terms of tropical (ultradiscrete) integrable systems. As an application, an alternative proof of the "shape change theorem" is given.
In previous work with Mikhail Khovanov and Aaron Lauda we introduced two odd analogues of the Schur functions: one via the combinatorics of Young tableaux (odd Kostka numbers) and one via the odd symmetrization operator. In this paper we introduce a third analogue, the plactic Schur functions. We show they coincide with both previously defined types of Schur function, confirming a conjecture. Using the plactic definition, we establish an odd Littlewood-Richardson rule. We also re-cast this rule in the language of polytopes, via the Knutson-Tao hive model.
For a given skew shape, we build a crystal graph on the set of all reverse plane partitions that have this shape. As a consequence, we get a simple extension of the Littlewood-Richardson rule for the expansion of the corresponding dual stable Grothendieck polynomial in terms of Schur polynomials.
We give a positive equivariant Littlewood-Richardson rule also discovered independently by Molev. Our proof generalizes a proof by Stembridge of the ordinary Littlewood-Richardson rule. We describe a weight-preserving bijection between our indexing tableaux and the Knutson-Tao puzzles.
We give a Littlewood-Richardson type rule for expanding the product of a row-strict quasisymmetric Schur function and a symmetric Schur function in terms of row-strict quasisymmetric Schur functions. This expansion follows from several new properties of an insertion algorithm defined by Mason and Remmel (2010) which inserts a positive integer into a row-strict composition tableau.
We give a combinatorial description of the composition factors of the induction product of two evaluation modules of the affine Iwahori-Hecke algebra of type GL(m). Using quantum affine Schur-Weyl duality, this yields a combinatorial description of the composition factors of the tensor product of two evaluation modules of the quantum affine algebra of type sl(n).
We provide two shifted analogues of the tableau switching process due to Benkart, Sottile, and Stroomer, the shifted tableau switching process and the modified shifted tableau switching process. They are performed by applying a sequence of specially contrived elementary transformations called {\em switches} and turn out to have some spectacular properties. For instance, the maps induced from these algorithms are involutive and behave very nicely with respect to shifted Young tableaux whose reading words satisfy the lattice property. As an application, we give combinatorial interpretations of S…
We give elementary and short proofs of the Littlewood-Richardson rules for type A Grassmannians and maximal isotropic Grassmannians, based on the corresponding Pieri rules.
We present a one-to-one correspondence between the set of admissible pictures and the Littlewood-Richardson crystals. As a simple consequence, we shall show that the set of pictures does not depend on the choice of admissible orders.
We give a combinatorial rule for computing intersection numbers on a flag manifold which come from products of Schubert classes pulled back from Grassmannian projections. This rule generalizes the known rule for Grassmannians.
Jack polynomials generalize several classical families of symmetric polynomials, including Schur polynomials, and are further generalized by Macdonald polynomials. In 1989, Richard Stanley conjectured that if the Littlewood-Richardson coefficient for a triple of Schur polynomials is 1, then the corresponding coefficient for Jack polynomials can be expressed as a product of weighted hooks of the Young diagrams associated to the partitions indexing the coefficient. We prove a special case of this conjecture in which the partitions indexing the Littlewood-Richardson coefficient have at most 3 par…
Let K be a complex reductive algebraic group and V a representation of K. Let S denote the ring of polynomials on V. Assume that the action of K on S is multiplicity free. If V_λ is an irreducible representation of K, let S_λ denote the corresponding isotypic component of S. Write S_λ S_μ for the subspace of S spanned by products of S_λ and S_μ. If V_ν occurs as an irreducible constituent of the tensor product of V_λ and V_μ, is it true that S_ν is contained in S_λ S_μ? We investigate this question for representations arising in the context of Hermitian symmetric pairs. We show that the answer…
We give an inductive procedure for finding the extremal rays of the equivariant Littlewood-Richardson cone, which is closely related to the solution space to S. Friedland's majorized Hermitian eigenvalue problem. In so doing, we solve the "rational version" of a problem posed by C. Robichaux, H. Yadav, and A. Yong. Our procedure is a natural extension of P. Belkale's algorithm for the classical Littlewood-Richardson cone. The main tools for accommodating the equivariant setting are certain foundational results of D. Anderson, E. Richmond, and A. Yong. We also study two families of special rays…
We extend the theory of Littlewood-Richardson fillings (defined over the non-negative integers) to include diagrams with rows and boxes of real-valued length. We realize such fillings as invariants of matrix pairs over rings with a real-valued valuation. We then prove a bijection between pairs of fillings determined by a matrix pair, and connect this to the classical row-switching bijection for Littlewoo-Richardson fillings. We utilize matrix calculations to interpret continuous deformations of generalized Littlewood-Richardson fillings.
Benkart, Sottile, and Stroomer have completely characterized by Knuth and dual Knuth equivalence a bijective proof of the conjugation symmetry of the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. Tableau-switching provides an algorithm to produce such a bijective proof. Fulton has shown that the White and the Hanlon-Sundaram maps are versions of that bijection. In this paper one exhibits explicitly the Yamanouchi word produced by that conjugation symmetry map which on its turn leads to a new and very natural version of the same map already considered independently. A consequence of this latter construct…
We prove a general combinatorial formula yielding the intersection number $c_{u,v}^w$ of three particular $Λ$-minuscule Schubert classes in any Kac-Moody homogeneous space, generalising the Littlewood-Richardson rule. The combinatorics are based on jeu de taquin rectification in a poset defined by the heap of $w$.
In this work we continue our study of Fully Packed Loop (FPL) configurations in a triangle. These are certain subgraphs on a triangular subset of the square lattice, which first arose in the study of the usual FPL configurations on a square grid. We show that, in a special case, the enumeration of these FPLs in a triangle is given by Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. The proof consists of a bijection with Knutson-Tao puzzles.
Kostka numbers and Littlewood-Richardson coefficients play an essential role in the representation theory of the symmetric groups and the special linear groups. There has been a significant amount of interest in their computation. The issue of their computational complexity has been a question of folklore, but was asked explicitly by E. Rassart. We prove that the computation of either quantity is #P-complete. The reduction to computing Kostka numbers, is from the #P-complete problem of counting the number of 2 x k contingency tables having given row and column sums. The main ingredient in this…
In this paper we explicitly compute all Littlewood-Richardson coefficients for semisimple or Kac-Moody groups G, that is, the structure coefficients of the cohomology algebra H^*(G/P), where P is a parabolic subgroup of G. These coefficients are of importance in enumerative geometry, algebraic combinatorics and representation theory. Our formula for the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients is given in terms of the Cartan matrix and the Weyl group of G. However, if some off-diagonal entries of the Cartan matrix are 0 or -1, the formula may contain negative summands. On the other hand, if the Cart…
