English

Schur-hooks and Bernoulli number recurrences

Combinatorics 2025-01-09 v2

Abstract

Given an identity relating families of Schur and power sum symmetric functions, this may be thought of as encoding representation-theoretic properties according to how the pp-to-ss transition matrices provide the irreducible character tables for symmetric groups. The case of the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule for cycles provides that pn=i=0n1(1)is(ni,1i)p_{n} = \sum_{i = 0}^{n-1} (-1)^i s_{(n-i, 1^{i})}, and, since the power sum generator pnp_{n} reduces to ζ(2n)\zeta(2n) for the Riemann zeta function ζ\zeta and for specialized values of the indeterminates involved in the inverse limit construction of the algebra of symmetric functions, this motivates both combinatorial and number-theoretic applications related to the given case of the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule. In this direction, since every Schur-hook admits an expansion in terms of twofold products of elementary and complete homogeneous generators, we exploit this property for the same specialization that allows us to express pnp_{n} with the Bernoulli number B2nB_{2n}, using remarkable results due to Hoffman on multiple harmonic series. This motivates our bijective approach, through the use of sign-reversing involutions, toward the determination of identities that relate Schur-hooks and power sum symmetric functions and that we apply to obtain a new recurrence for Bernoulli numbers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.18368,
  title  = {Schur-hooks and Bernoulli number recurrences},
  author = {John M. Campbell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.18368},
  year   = {2025}
}

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R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:47:59.922Z