Related papers: Smooth entrywise positivity preservers, a Horn-Loe…
Compared to the entrywise transforms which preserve positive semidefiniteness, those leaving invariant the inertia of symmetric matrices reveal a surprising rigidity. We first obtain the classification of negativity preservers by combining…
Given an element in a finite-dimensional real vector space, $V$, that is a nonnegative linear combination of basis vectors for some basis $B$, we compute the probability that it is furthermore a nonnegative linear combination of basis…
It is known that differences of symmetric functions corresponding to various bases are nonnegative on the nonnegative orthant exactly when the partitions defining them are comparable in dominance order. The only exception is the case of…
Schur's transforms of a polynomial are used to count its roots in the unit disk. These are generalized them by introducing the sequence of symmetric sub-resultants of two polynomials. Although they do have a determinantal definition, we…
The involution Stanley symmetric functions $\hat{F}_y$ are the stable limits of the analogues of Schubert polynomials for the orbits of the orthogonal group in the flag variety. These symmetric functions are also generating functions for…
We define an abelian group homomorphism $\mathscr{F}$, which we call the Frobenius transform, from the ring of symmetric functions to the ring of the symmetric power series. The matrix entries of $\mathscr{F}$ in the Schur basis are the…
We study a linear map on symmetric functions that ``divides'' a partition by a positive integer $k$, sending a Schur function indexed by a partition of $kn$ to a symmetric function indexed by partitions of $n$. We determine its Schur…
A set of functions is defined which is indexed by a positive integer $n$ and partitions of integers. The case $n=1$ reproduces the standard Schur polynomials. These functions are seen to arise naturally as a determinant of an action on the…
We provide a countable set of conditions based on elementary symmetric polynomials that are necessary and sufficient for a trace class integral operator to be positive semidefinite, which is an important cornerstone for quantum theory in…
We say a sequence $f_0, f_1, f_2, \ldots$ of symmetric functions is Schur log-concave if $f_n^2 - f_{n-1}f_{n+1}$ is Schur positive for all $n\ge1$. We conjecture that a very general class of sequences of Schur functions satisfies this…
The orbits of the symplectic group acting on the type A flag variety are indexed by the fixed-point-free involutions in a finite symmetric group. The cohomology classes of the closures of these orbits have polynomial representatives…
We consider the problem of characterizing entrywise functions that preserve the cone of positive definite matrices when applied to every off-diagonal element. Our results extend theorems of Schoenberg [Duke Math. J. 9], Rudin [Duke Math. J.…
We provide a short proof of the theorem that every real multivariate polynomial has a symmetric determinantal representation, which was first proved in J. W. Helton, S. A. McCullough, and V. Vinnikov, Noncommutative convexity arises from…
The product $s_\mu s_\nu$ of two Schur functions is one of the most famous examples of a Schur-positive function, i.e. a symmetric function which, when written as a linear combination of Schur functions, has all positive coefficients. We…
We study the symmetric polynomial $\prod_{\alpha\in A_{n,d}}\bigl(1+\alpha_1 x_1+\cdots+\alpha_n x_n\bigr)$ where $A_{n,d}:=\{\alpha\in\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}^n:|\alpha|=d\}$, which is the total Chern class of $\mathrm{Sym}^d(\mathbb{C}^n)$,…
Entrywise powers of matrices have been well-studied in the literature, and have recently received renewed attention in the regularization of high-dimensional correlation matrices. In this paper, we study powers of positive semidefinite…
When one expands a Schur function in terms of the irreducible characters of the symplectic (or orthogonal) group, the coefficient of the trivial character is 0 unless the indexing partition has an appropriate form. A number of q-analogues…
We study representation stability in the sense of Church, Ellenberg, and Farb \cite{FI-module} through the lens of symmetric function theory and the different symmetric function bases. We show that a sequence, $(F_n)_n$, where $F_n$ is a…
This is a short note about Schur positivity. We introduce Schur polynomials and explain how they appear in the representation theory of the general linear group. We end with a new result of the author with F. Bergeron and V. Reiner that…
Determining if a symmetric function is Schur-positive is a prevalent and, in general, a notoriously difficult problem. In this paper we study the Schur-positivity of a family of symmetric functions. Given a partition \lambda, we denote by…