In mathematics, Kostka polynomials, named after the mathematician Carl Kostka, are families of polynomials that generalize the Kostka numbers. They are studied primarily in algebraic combinatorics and representation theory.
The two-variable Kostka polynomials Kλμ(q, t) are known by several names including Kostka–Foulkes polynomials, Macdonald–Kostka polynomials or q,t-Kostka polynomials. Here the indices λ and μ are integer partitions and Kλμ(q, t) is polynomial in the variables q and t. Sometimes one considers single-variable versions of these polynomials that arise by setting q = 0, i.e., by considering the polynomial Kλμ(t) = Kλμ(0, t).
There are two slightly different versions of them, one called transformed Kostka polynomials.
The one-variable specializations of the Kostka polynomials can be used to relate Hall-Littlewood polynomials Pμ to Schur polynomials sλ:
These polynomials were conjectured to have non-negative integer coefficients by Foulkes, and this was later proved in 1978 by Alain Lascoux and Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. In fact, they show that
where the sum is taken over all semi-standard Young tableaux with shape λ and weight μ. Here, charge is a certain combinatorial statistic on semi-standard Young tableaux.
The Macdonald–Kostka polynomials can be used to relate Macdonald polynomials (also denoted by Pμ) to Schur polynomials sλ:
where
Kostka numbers are special values of the one- or two-variable Kostka polynomials:
Examples
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References
- Lascoux, A.; Scützenberger, M.P. "Sur une conjecture de H.O. Foulkes". Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Série A-B. 286 (7): A323–A324.
- Macdonald, I. G. (1995), Symmetric functions and Hall polynomials, Oxford Mathematical Monographs (2nd ed.), The Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-853489-1, MR 1354144
- Nelsen, Kendra; Ram, Arun (2003), "Kostka-Foulkes polynomials and Macdonald spherical functions", Surveys in combinatorics, 2003 (Bangor), London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser., vol. 307, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 325–370, arXiv:math/0401298, Bibcode:2004math......1298N, MR 2011741
- Stembridge, J. R. (2005), Kostka-Foulkes Polynomials of General Type, lecture notes from AIM workshop on Generalized Kostka polynomials