We extend the notion of ascent-compatibility from symmetric groups to all Coxeter groups, thereby providing a type-independent framework for constructing families of modules of $0$-Hecke algebras. We apply this framework in type B to give representation–theoretic interpretations of a number of noteworthy families of type-B quasisymmetric functions. Next, we construct modules of the type-B $0$-Hecke algebra corresponding to type-B analogs of Schur functions and introduce a type-B analog of Schur Q-functions; we prove that these shifted domino functions expand positively in the type-B peak functions. We define a type-B analog of the $0$-Hecke–Clifford algebra, and we use this to provide representation–theoretic interpretations for both the type-B peak functions and the shifted domino functions. We consider the modules of this algebra induced from type-B $0$-Hecke modules constructed via ascent-compatibility and prove a general formula, in terms of type-B peak functions, for the type-B quasisymmetric characteristics of the restrictions of these modules.

An identity that is reminiscent of the Littlewood identity plays a fundamental role in recent proofs of the facts that alternating sign triangles are equinumerous with totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions and that alternating sign trapezoids are equinumerous with holey cyclically symmetric lozenge tilings of a hexagon. We establish a bounded version of a generalization of this identity. Further, we provide combinatorial interpretations of both sides of the identity. The ultimate goal would be to construct a combinatorial proof of this identity (possibly via an appropriate variant of the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence) and its unbounded version, as this would improve the understanding of the mysterious relation between alternating sign trapezoids and plane partition objects.

We continue our study of exponent semigroups of rational matrices. Our main result is that the matricial dimension of a numerical semigroup is at most its multiplicity (the least generator), greatly improving upon the previous upper bound (the conductor). For many numerical semigroups, including all symmetric numerical semigroups, our upper bound is tight. Our construction uses combinatorially structured matrices and is parametrised by Kunz coordinates, which are central to enumerative problems in the study of numerical semigroups.

Chow rings of flag varieties have bases of Schubert cycles $\sigma _u $, indexed by permutations. A major problem of algebraic combinatorics is to give a positive combinatorial formula for the structure constants of this basis. The celebrated Littlewood–Richardson rules solve this problem for special products $\sigma _u \cdot \sigma _v$, where u and v are p-Grassmannian permutations.

Building on work of Wyser, we introduce backstable clans to prove such a rule for the problem of computing the product $\sigma _u \cdot \sigma _v$ when u is p-inverse Grassmannian and v is q-inverse Grassmannian. By establishing several new families of linear relations among structure constants, we further extend this result to obtain a positive combinatorial rule for $\sigma _u \cdot \sigma _v$ in the case that u is covered in weak Bruhat order by a p-inverse Grassmannian permutation and v is a q-inverse Grassmannian permutation.

Assuming Stanley’s P-partitions conjecture holds, the regular Schur labeled skew shape posets are precisely the finite posets P with underlying set $\{1, 2, \ldots , |P|\}$ such that the P-partition generating function is symmetric and the set of linear extensions of P, denoted $\Sigma _L(P)$, is a left weak Bruhat interval in the symmetric group $\mathfrak {S}_{|P|}$. We describe the permutations in $\Sigma _L(P)$ in terms of reading words of standard Young tableaux when P is a regular Schur labeled skew shape poset, and classify $\Sigma _L(P)$’s up to descent-preserving isomorphism as P ranges over regular Schur labeled skew shape posets. The results obtained are then applied to classify the $0$-Hecke modules $\mathsf {M}_P$ associated with regular Schur labeled skew shape posets P up to isomorphism. Then we characterize regular Schur labeled skew shape posets as the finite posets P whose linear extensions form a dual plactic-closed subset of $\mathfrak {S}_{|P|}$. Using this characterization, we construct distinguished filtrations of $\mathsf {M}_P$ with respect to the Schur basis when P is a regular Schur labeled skew shape poset. Further issues concerned with the classification and decomposition of the $0$-Hecke modules $\mathsf {M}_P$ are also discussed.

We settle the question of where exactly do the reduced Kronecker coefficients lie on the spectrum between the Littlewood-Richardson and Kronecker coefficients by showing that every Kronecker coefficient of the symmetric group is equal to a reduced Kronecker coefficient by an explicit construction. This implies the equivalence of an open problem by Stanley from 2000 and an open problem by Kirillov from 2004 about combinatorial interpretations of these two families of coefficients. Moreover, as a corollary, we deduce that deciding the positivity of reduced Kronecker coefficients is ${\textsf {NP}}$-hard, and computing them is ${{{\textsf {#P}}}}$-hard under parsimonious many-one reductions. Our proof also provides an explicit isomorphism of the corresponding highest weight vector spaces.

Let ${\mathbf {x}}_{n \times n}$ be an $n \times n$ matrix of variables, and let ${\mathbb {F}}[{\mathbf {x}}_{n \times n}]$ be the polynomial ring in these variables over a field ${\mathbb {F}}$. We study the ideal $I_n \subseteq {\mathbb {F}}[{\mathbf {x}}_{n \times n}]$ generated by all row and column variable sums and all products of two variables drawn from the same row or column. We show that the quotient ${\mathbb {F}}[{\mathbf {x}}_{n \times n}]/I_n$ admits a standard monomial basis determined by Viennot’s shadow line avatar of the Schensted correspondence. As a corollary, the Hilbert series of ${\mathbb {F}}[{\mathbf {x}}_{n \times n}]/I_n$ is the generating function of permutations in ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$ by the length of their longest increasing subsequence. Along the way, we describe a ‘shadow junta’ basis of the vector space of k-local permutation statistics. We also calculate the structure of ${\mathbb {F}}[{\mathbf {x}}_{n \times n}]/I_n$ as a graded ${\mathfrak {S}}_n \times {\mathfrak {S}}_n$-module.

Given a permutation statistic $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}$, define its inverse statistic $\operatorname {\mathrm {ist}}$ by . We give a general approach, based on the theory of symmetric functions, for finding the joint distribution of $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}_{1}$ and $\operatorname {\mathrm {ist}}_{2}$ whenever $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}_{1}$ and $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}_{2}$ are descent statistics: permutation statistics that depend only on the descent composition. We apply this method to a number of descent statistics, including the descent number, the peak number, the left peak number, the number of up-down runs and the major index. Perhaps surprisingly, in many cases the polynomial giving the joint distribution of $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}_{1}$ and $\operatorname {\mathrm {ist}}_{2}$ can be expressed as a simple sum involving products of the polynomials giving the (individual) distributions of $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}_{1}$ and $\operatorname {\mathrm {st}}_{2}$. Our work leads to a rederivation of Stanley’s generating function for doubly alternating permutations, as well as several conjectures concerning real-rootedness and $\gamma $-positivity.

We revisit Haiman’s conjecture on the relations between characters of Kazdhan–Lusztig basis elements of the Hecke algebra over $S_n$. The conjecture asserts that, for purposes of character evaluation, any Kazhdan–Lusztig basis element is reducible to a sum of the simplest possible ones (those associated to so-called codominant permutations). When the basis element is associated to a smooth permutation, we are able to give a geometric proof of this conjecture. On the other hand, if the permutation is singular, we provide a counterexample.

Let $\Omega _n$ be the ring of polynomial-valued holomorphic differential forms on complex n-space, referred to in physics as the superspace ring of rank n. The symmetric group ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$ acts diagonally on $\Omega _n$ by permuting commuting and anticommuting generators simultaneously. We let $SI_n \subseteq \Omega _n$ be the ideal generated by ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$-invariants with vanishing constant term and study the quotient $SR_n = \Omega _n / SI_n$ of superspace by this ideal. We calculate the doubly-graded Hilbert series of $SR_n$ and prove an ‘operator theorem’, which characterizes the harmonic space $SH_n \subseteq \Omega _n$ attached to $SR_n$ in terms of the Vandermonde determinant and certain differential operators. Our methods employ commutative algebra results that were used in the study of Hessenberg varieties. Our results prove conjectures of N. Bergeron, Colmenarejo, Li, Machacek, Sulzgruber, Swanson, Wallach and Zabrocki.

We study analogues of Kronecker coefficients for symmetric inverse semigroups, for dual symmetric inverse semigroups and for the inverse semigroups of bijections between subquotients of finite sets. In all cases, we reduce the problem of determination of such coefficients to some group-theoretic and combinatorial problems. For symmetric inverse semigroups, we provide an explicit formula in terms of the classical Kronecker and Littlewood–Richardson coefficients for symmetric groups.

In this paper, we provide an application to the random distance-t walk in finite planes and derive asymptotic formulas (as $q \to \infty $) for the probability of return to start point after $\ell $ steps based on the “vertical” equidistribution of Kloosterman sums established by N. Katz. This work relies on a “Euclidean” association scheme studied in prior work of W. M. Kwok, E. Bannai, O. Shimabukuro, and H. Tanaka. We also provide a self-contained computation of the P-matrix and intersection numbers of this scheme for convenience in our application as well as a more explicit form for the intersection numbers in the planar case.

In this paper, we give Pieri rules for skew dual immaculate functions and their recently discovered row-strict counterparts. We establish our rules using a right-action analogue of the skew Littlewood–Richardson rule for Hopf algebras of Lam–Lauve–Sottile. We also obtain Pieri rules for row-strict (dual) immaculate functions.

We present extensions of the colorful Helly theorem for d-collapsible and d-Leray complexes, providing a common generalization to the matroidal versions of the theorem due to Kalai and Meshulam, the ‘very colorful’ Helly theorem introduced by Arocha, Bárány, Bracho, Fabila and Montejano and the ‘semi-intersecting’ colorful Helly theorem proved by Montejano and Karasev.

As an application, we obtain the following extension of Tverberg’s theorem: Let A be a finite set of points in ${\mathbb R}^d$ with $|A|>(r-1)(d+1)$. Then, there exist a partition $A_1,\ldots ,A_r$ of A and a subset $B\subset A$ of size $(r-1)(d+1)$ such that $\cap _{i=1}^r \operatorname {\mathrm {\text {conv}}}( (B\cup \{p\})\cap A_i)\neq \emptyset $ for all $p\in A\setminus B$. That is, we obtain a partition of A into r parts that remains a Tverberg partition even after removing all but one arbitrary point from $A\setminus B$.

We introduce a generalization of immanants of matrices, using partition algebra characters in place of symmetric group characters. We prove that our immanant-like function on square matrices, which we refer to as the recombinant, agrees with the usual definition for immanants for the special case whereby the vacillating tableaux associated with the irreducible characters correspond, according to the Bratteli diagram for partition algebra representations, to the integer partition shapes for symmetric group characters. In contrast to previously studied variants and generalizations of immanants, as in Temperley–Lieb immanants and f-immanants, the sum that we use to define recombinants is indexed by a full set of partition diagrams, as opposed to permutations.

Let $S=K[x_1,\ldots ,x_n]$ be the polynomial ring over a field K, and let A be a finitely generated standard graded S-algebra. We show that if the defining ideal of A has a quadratic initial ideal, then all the graded components of A are componentwise linear. Applying this result to the Rees ring $\mathcal {R}(I)$ of a graded ideal I gives a criterion on I to have componentwise linear powers. Moreover, for any given graph G, a construction on G is presented which produces graphs whose cover ideals $I_G$ have componentwise linear powers. This, in particular, implies that for any Cohen–Macaulay Cameron–Walker graph G all powers of $I_G$ have linear resolutions. Moreover, forming a cone on special graphs like unmixed chordal graphs, path graphs, and Cohen–Macaulay bipartite graphs produces cover ideals with componentwise linear powers.

We give an elementary symmetric function expansion for the expressions $M\Delta _{m_\gamma e_1}\Pi e_\lambda ^{\ast }$ and $M\Delta _{m_\gamma e_1}\Pi s_\lambda ^{\ast }$ when $t=1$ in terms of what we call $\gamma $-parking functions and lattice $\gamma $-parking functions. Here, $\Delta _F$ and $\Pi $ are certain eigenoperators of the modified Macdonald basis and $M=(1-q)(1-t)$. Our main results, in turn, give an elementary basis expansion at $t=1$ for symmetric functions of the form $M \Delta _{Fe_1} \Theta _{G} J$ whenever F is expanded in terms of monomials, G is expanded in terms of the elementary basis, and J is expanded in terms of the modified elementary basis $\{\Pi e_\lambda ^\ast \}_\lambda $. Even the most special cases of this general Delta and Theta operator expression are significant; we highlight a few of these special cases. We end by giving an e-positivity conjecture for when t is not specialized, proposing that our objects can also give the elementary basis expansion in the unspecialized symmetric function.

The K-theoretic Schur P- and Q-functions $G\hspace {-0.2mm}P_\lambda $ and $G\hspace {-0.2mm}Q_\lambda $ may be concretely defined as weight-generating functions for semistandard shifted set-valued tableaux. These symmetric functions are the shifted analogues of stable Grothendieck polynomials and were introduced by Ikeda and Naruse for applications in geometry. Nakagawa and Naruse specified families of dual K-theoretic Schur P- and Q-functions $g\hspace {-0.1mm}p_\lambda $ and $g\hspace {-0.1mm}q_\lambda $ via a Cauchy identity involving $G\hspace {-0.2mm}P_\lambda $ and $G\hspace {-0.2mm}Q_\lambda $. They conjectured that the dual power series are weight-generating functions for certain shifted plane partitions. We prove this conjecture. We also derive a related generating function formula for the images of $g\hspace {-0.1mm}p_\lambda $ and $g\hspace {-0.1mm}q_\lambda $ under the $\omega $ involution of the ring of symmetric functions. This confirms a conjecture of Chiu and the second author. Using these results, we verify a conjecture of Ikeda and Naruse that the $G\hspace {-0.2mm}Q$-functions are a basis for a ring.

We give explicit presentations of the integral equivariant cohomology of the affine Grassmannians and flag varieties in type A, arising from their natural embeddings in the corresponding infinite (Sato) Grassmannian and flag variety. These presentations are compared with results obtained by Lam and Shimozono, for rational equivariant cohomology of the affine Grassmannian, and by Larson, for the integral cohomology of the moduli stack of vector bundles on .