Young tableau

In mathematics, a Young tableau (/tæˈbloʊ, ˈtæbloʊ/; plural: tableaux) is a combinatorial object useful in representation theory and Schubert calculus. It provides a convenient way to describe the group representations of the symmetric and general linear groups and to study their properties. Young tableaux were introduced by Alfred Young, a mathematician at Cambridge University, in 1900. They were then applied to the study of the symmetric group by Georg Frobenius in 1903. Their theory was further developed by many mathematicians, including Percy MacMahon, W. V. D. Hodge, G. de B. Robinson, Gian-Carlo Rota, Alain Lascoux, Marcel-Paul Schützenberger and Richard P. Stanley. In mathematics, a Young tableau (/tæˈbloʊ, ˈtæbloʊ/; plural: tableaux) is a combinatorial object useful in representation theory and Schubert calculus. It provides a convenient way to describe the group representations of the symmetric and general linear groups and to study their properties. Young tableaux were introduced by Alfred Young, a mathematician at Cambridge University, in 1900. They were then applied to the study of the symmetric group by Georg Frobenius in 1903. Their theory was further developed by many mathematicians, including Percy MacMahon, W. V. D. Hodge, G. de B. Robinson, Gian-Carlo Rota, Alain Lascoux, Marcel-Paul Schützenberger and Richard P. Stanley. Note: this article uses the English convention for displaying Young diagrams and tableaux. A Young diagram (also called a Ferrers diagram, particularly when represented using dots) is a finite collection of boxes, or cells, arranged in left-justified rows, with the row lengths in non-increasing order. Listing the number of boxes in each row gives a partition λ of a non-negative integer n, the total number of boxes of the diagram. The Young diagram is said to be of shape λ, and it carries the same information as that partition. Containment of one Young diagram in another defines a partial ordering on the set of all partitions, which is in fact a lattice structure, known as Young's lattice. Listing the number of boxes of a Young diagram in each column gives another partition, the conjugate or transpose partition of λ; one obtains a Young diagram of that shape by reflecting the original diagram along its main diagonal. There is almost universal agreement that in labeling boxes of Young diagrams by pairs of integers, the first index selects the row of the diagram, and the second index selects the box within the row. Nevertheless, two distinct conventions exist to display these diagrams, and consequently tableaux: the first places each row below the previous one, the second stacks each row on top of the previous one. Since the former convention is mainly used by Anglophones while the latter is often preferred by Francophones, it is customary to refer to these conventions respectively as the English notation and the French notation; for instance, in his book on symmetric functions, Macdonald advises readers preferring the French convention to 'read this book upside down in a mirror' (Macdonald 1979, p. 2). This nomenclature probably started out as jocular. The English notation corresponds to the one universally used for matrices, while the French notation is closer to the convention of Cartesian coordinates; however, French notation differs from that convention by placing the vertical coordinate first. The figure on the right shows, using the English notation, the Young diagram corresponding to the partition (5, 4, 1) of the number 10. The conjugate partition, measuring the column lengths, is (3, 2, 2, 2, 1). In many applications, for example when defining Jack functions, it is convenient to define the arm length aλ(s) of a box s as the number of boxes to the right of s in the diagram λ. Similarly, the leg length lλ(s) is the number of boxes below s. This notation assumes that the English notation is used.For example, the hook value of a box s in λ is then simply aλ(s)+lλ(s)+1. A Young tableau is obtained by filling in the boxes of the Young diagram with symbols taken from some alphabet, which is usually required to be a totally ordered set. Originally that alphabet was a set of indexed variables x1, x2, x3..., but now one usually uses a set of numbers for brevity. In their original application to representations of the symmetric group, Young tableaux have n distinct entries, arbitrarily assigned to boxes of the diagram. A tableau is called standard if the entries in each row and each column are increasing. The number of distinct standard Young tableaux on n entries is given by the involution numbers In other applications, it is natural to allow the same number to appear more than once (or not at all) in a tableau. A tableau is called semistandard, or column strict, if the entries weakly increase along each row and strictly increase down each column. Recording the number of times each number appears in a tableau gives a sequence known as the weight of the tableau. Thus the standard Young tableaux are precisely the semistandard tableaux of weight (1,1,...,1), which requires every integer up to n to occur exactly once. There are several variations of this definition: for example, in a row-strict tableau the entries strictly increase along the rows and weakly increase down the columns. Also, tableaux with decreasing entries have been considered, notably, in the theory of plane partitions. There are also generalizations such as domino tableaux or ribbon tableaux, in which several boxes may be grouped together before assigning entries to them. A skew shape is a pair of partitions (λ, μ) such that the Young diagram of λ contains the Young diagram of μ; it is denoted by λ/μ. If λ = (λ1, λ2, ...) and μ = (μ1, μ2, ...), then the containment of diagrams means that μi ≤ λi for all i. The skew diagram of a skew shape λ/μ is the set-theoretic difference of the Young diagrams of λ and μ: the set of squares that belong to the diagram of λ but not to that of μ. A skew tableau of shape λ/μ is obtained by filling the squares of the corresponding skew diagram; such a tableau is semistandard if entries increase weakly along each row, and increase strictly down each column, and it is standard if moreover all numbers from 1 to the number of squares of the skew diagram occur exactly once. While the map from partitions to their Young diagrams is injective, this is not the case from the map from skew shapes to skew diagrams; therefore the shape of a skew diagram cannot always be determined from the set of filled squares only. Although many properties of skew tableaux only depend on the filled squares, some operations defined on them do require explicit knowledge of λ and μ, so it is important that skew tableaux do record this information: two distinct skew tableaux may differ only in their shape, while they occupy the same set of squares, each filled with the same entries. Young tableaux can be identified with skew tableaux in which μ is the empty partition (0) (the unique partition of 0).