Recursion relations for Unitary integrals, Combinatorics and the Toeplitz Lattice

The Toeplitz determinants (of increasing size) associated with the symbols $exp{t(z+z^{-1})}$ or $(1-{\xi}{z})^{\alpha} (1-{\xi}{z^{-1}})^{\beta}$ satisfy recursion relations, thus expressing all the Toeplitz determinants as a rational function of the first few determinants. A. Borodin found these relations using Riemann-Hilbert methods. The nature of Borodin's relations pointed towards the Toeplitz lattice and its Virasoro algebra, as developed by the authors. In this paper, we take the Toeplitz and Virasoro approach for a fairly large class of symbols, leading to a systematic and simple way of generating such recursion relations. The latter are very naturally expressed in terms of the $L$-matrices appearing in the Lax pair for the Toeplitz lattice equations. As a surprise, we find, compared to Borodin's, a different set of relations, except for the 3-step relations associated with the symbol $e^{t(z+z^{-1})}$. Moreover, these recursion relations define an invariant manifold for the Toeplitz lattice. This leads to a "discrete Painlev\'e property" (singularity confinement) for the rational recursion relations, as a consequence of the classical ``continuous Painlev\'e property" for the Toeplitz lattice.