Comparing products of Schur functions and quasisymmetric functions

In this thesis a conjecture of Okounkov, a conjecture of Fomin-Fulton-Li-Poon, and a special case of Lascoux-Leclerc-Thibon's conjecture on Schur positivity of certain differences of products of Schur functions are proved. In the first part of the work a combinatorial method is developed that allows to prove weaker versions of those conjectures. In the second part a recent result of Rhoades and Skandera is used to provide a proof of actual Schur positivity results. Several further generalizations are stated and proved. In particular, an intriguing log-concavity property of Schur functions is observed. In addition, a stronger conjecture is stated in language of alcoved polytops. A weaker version of this conjecture is proved using a characterization of Klyachko cone and the theory of Temperley-Lieb immanants.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mathematics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Pylyavskyy, Pavlo

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard Stanley.

• Mathematics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38957

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38957