Stanley character polynomials

Abstract

Stanley considered suitably normalized characters of the symmetric groups on Young diagrams having a special geometric form, namely multirectangular Young diagrams. He proved that the character is a polynomial in the lengths of the sides of the rectangles forming the Young diagram and he conjectured an explicit form of this polynomial. This Stanley character polynomial and this way of parametrizing the set of Young diagrams turned out to be a powerful tool for several problems of the dual combinatorics of the characters of the symmetric groups and asymptotic representation theory, in particular to Kerov polynomials.Comment: Dedicated to Richard P. Stanley on the occasion of his seventieth birthda