English

Equality of skew Schur functions in noncommuting variables

Combinatorics 2025-02-05 v2

Abstract

The question of classifying when two skew Schur functions are equal is a substantial open problem, which remains unsolved for over a century. In 2022, Aliniaeifard, Li and van Willigenburg introduced skew Schur functions in noncommuting variables, s(δ,D)s_{(\delta,D)}, where DD is a connected skew diagram with nn boxes and δ\delta is a permutation in the symmetric group SnS_n. In this paper, we combine these two and classify when two skew Schur functions in noncommuting variables are equal: s(δ,D)=s(τ,T)s_{(\delta,D)} = s_{(\tau,T)} such that DTD\ne T if and only if DD is a nonsymmetric ribbon, TT is the antipodal rotation of DD and τ1δ\overline{\tau^{-1}\delta} is an explicit bijection between two set partitions determined by DD.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2403.19744,
  title  = {Equality of skew Schur functions in noncommuting variables},
  author = {Emma Yu Jin and Stephanie van Willigenburg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.19744},
  year   = {2025}
}

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14 pages