The Algebraic Combinatorics Seminar
Scheduled for Fridays at 3:40 PM


Schedule

In reverse-chronological order.

Date Speaker Title (click titles for abstract)
23 November, 2012 Juana Sanchez Ortega Creation Operators on the Immaculate basis
Juana will revisit the defintions of the creation operators for the immaculate basis and derive formulas for the expansion of compositions of these elements when the index of the operator is 0. (Notes)
16 November, 2012 Nantel Bergeron A Noncommutative Littlewood-Richardson Rule
Nantel will continue his talk from last time and show what is needed in order to prove the LR rule. The argument which shows that the LR rule is correct involves enumerating the terms of an algebraic expression with combinatoiral objects (immaculate tableaux) and showing that there is a sign reversing involution.
9 November, 2012 Nantel Bergeron Operators on Immaculate bases and a right Pieri rule
The ideas is to slowly work our way (this semester) to better understand some subalgebra of the endomorphism of NSym At this point, we now have a description (generators and relations) of the subspace spanned by right-left multiplications and the dual operations (perp). Now we which to study the subspace spanned by endomorphisms of "creation" type (those are particular series in the operators above). The creation operators define (Create) particular basis (Immaculate basis) of NSym. To understand the relation among them, it seams we need to have the analogue of Littlewood-Richardson rule for the Immaculate basis.
Nantel will recall some notions related to the immaculate basis and then work his way to the LR rule. [That may take more then one session]
Juana will discuss the relation of the creation operators, and try to use the LR-rule to give the answer a better form.
2 November, 2012 Mike Zabrocki Commutation relations between NSym and QSym^*
I will derive some of the commutation relations between multiplication by elements in NSym and dual to multiplication by elements in QSym. (Notes)
26 October, 2012 Allen Knutson Combinatorial rules for branching to symmetric subgroups
Given a pair G>K of compact connected Lie groups, and a dominant G-weight lambda, it is easy to use character theory to say how the irrep V_lambda decomposes as a K-representation. If G = K x K, this is tensor product decomposition, for which we have an enumerative formula: the constituents can be counted as a number of Littelmann paths or MV polytopes.

I'll give a positive formula in the more general case that K is a symmetric subgroup of G, i.e., the (identity component of) the fixed-point set of an involution. The combinatorics is controlled by the poset of K-orbits on the flag manifold G/B, which reduces to the Bruhat order in the case G = K x K. I can prove this formula in the asymptotic (or, symplectic) situation replacing lambda by a large multiple, and nonasymptotically for certain pairs (G,K).
12 October, 2012 Oded Jacobi Categorification of the Heisenberg algebra
The ideas is to slowly work our way (this semester) to better understand some subalgebra of the endomorphism of QSym in ways similar to the way the Heisenberg algebra is understood as a subalgebra of the endomorphism of Sym.
5 October, 2012 Mike Zabrocki Operators on Immaculate bases of QSym and NSym
I'll give an overview of how skewing and multiplication operators can be used to generate the endomorphism ring of Sym and what the corresponding statement is for NSym and QSym. Next I will show how these operators can be combined to define elements of End(NSym) which create bases.
28 September, 2012 Nantel Bergeron An introduction to QSym and NSym II
The ideas is to slowly work our way (this semester) to better understand some subalgebra of the endomorphism of QSym in ways similar to the way the Heisenberg algebra is understood as a subalgebra of the endomorphism of Sym.
21 September, 2012 Nantel Bergeron An introduction to QSym and NSym
The ideas is to slowly work our way (this semester) to better understand some subalgebra of the endomorphism of QSym in ways similar to the way the Heisenberg algebra is understood as a subalgebra of the endomorphism of Sym.
14 September, 2012 Organizational meeting Discussion on open problems as possible topics for this seminar
Oded Yacobi presented a summary of the Heisenberg algebra and proposed a similar construction for the construction of an analogous algebra related to the representation ring of the Hecke algebra at q=0 (NSym and/or QSym). Mike presented a conjecture about the evaluation of k-Schur functions at a root of unity.

Notes.


About the seminar. Every year we pick a new topic to explore. Nantel, Mike and Oded have suggested exploring the 'categorification' of the Heisenberg-like algebra living in End(QSym) or End(NSym).

Year Topic
2011-2012 k-Schur functions and affine permutations
2010-2011 Littlewood Richardson rule k-Schur functions.
2009-2010 Idempotents and weakly ordered semigroups. (q,t) Catalan Numbers.
2008-2009 Littlewood-Richardson Rule, Shifted Tableaux and P-Schur functions
2007-2008 Open problems around k-Schur functions and non-commutative symmetric functions
2006-2007 Open problems
2005-2006 Cluster Algebras and Quivers
Spring 2005 Formal languages and analytic classes of functions
Fall 2004 (Quasi-) Symmetric functions in noncommutative variables and applications
Winter 2003 Crystal Bases and Representation Theory, Super-algebras, etc.
Fall 2003 Quasi-Symmetric functions and applications
Fall 2002 Crystal Bases and Representation Theory