The cyclic sieving phenomenon: a survey

The cyclic sieving phenomenon was defined by Reiner, Stanton, and White in a 2004 paper. Let X be a finite set, C be a finite cyclic group acting on X, and f(q) be a polynomial in q with nonnegative integer coefficients. Then the triple (X,C,f(q)) exhibits the cyclic sieving phenomenon if, for all g in C, we have # X^g = f(w) where # denotes cardinality, X^g is the fixed point set of g, and w is a root of unity chosen to have the same order as g. It might seem improbable that substituting a root of unity into a polynomial with integer coefficients would have an enumerative meaning. But many instances of the cyclic sieving phenomenon have now been found. Furthermore, the proofs that this phenomenon hold often involve interesting and sometimes deep results from representation theory. We will survey the current literature on cyclic sieving, providing the necessary background about representations, Coxeter groups, and other algebraic aspects as needed.Comment: 48 pages, 3 figures, the sedcond version contains numerous changes suggested by colleagues and the referee. To appear in the London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series. The third version has a few smaller change

Invariant tensors and the cyclic sieving phenomenon

We construct a large class of examples of the cyclic sieving phenomenon by expoiting the representation theory of semi-simple Lie algebras. Let $M$ be a finite dimensional representation of a semi-simple Lie algebra and let $B$ be the associated Kashiwara crystal. For $r\ge 0$, the triple $(X,c,P)$ which exhibits the cyclic sieving phenomenon is constructed as follows: the set $X$ is the set of isolated vertices in the crystal $\otimes^rB$; the map $c\colon X\rightarrow X$ is a generalisation of promotion acting on standard tableaux of rectangular shape and the polynomial $P$ is the fake degree of the Frobenius character of a representation of $\mathfrak{S}_r$ related to the natural action of $\mathfrak{S}_r$ on the subspace of invariant tensors in $\otimes^rM$. Taking $M$ to be the defining representation of $\mathrm{SL}(n)$ gives the cyclic sieving phenomenon for rectangular tableaux

Dihedral Sieving Phenomena

Cyclic sieving is a well-known phenomenon where certain interesting polynomials, especially $q$-analogues, have useful interpretations related to actions and representations of the cyclic group. We propose a definition of sieving for an arbitrary group $G$ and study it for the dihedral group $I_2(n)$ of order $2n$. This requires understanding the generators of the representation ring of the dihedral group. For $n$ odd, we exhibit several instances of dihedral sieving which involve the generalized Fibonomial coefficients, recently studied by Amdeberhan, Chen, Moll, and Sagan. We also exhibit an instance of dihedral sieving involving Garsia and Haiman's $(q,t)$-Catalan numbers.Comment: 10 page