Positivity problems in enumerative and algebraic combinatorics

Theme 3: Symmetric functions and total positivity

Symmetric functions and total positivity

The theme on this page is to upgrade classical theorems from analysis to the realm of symmetric functions. Several of these classical theorems assert pointwise positivity. It is then natural to ask if they can then be upgraded to coefficientwise positivity.

Key References:
Open
P3.1 Conjectures for Hadamard product and factorial Hadamard product

Let \({\bf X} = (x_i)_{i\geq 0} \), \({\bf Y} = (y_i)_{i\geq 0} \) and \({\bf Z} = (z_i)_{i\geq 0} \) be three sequences of indeterminates.

(P3.1.a) Conjecture: All the Toeplitz minors of the sequence \((e_n({\bf X} ) e_n({\bf Y} ))_{n\geq 0}\) are monomial-positive in \({\bf X} \) and \({\bf Y} \).

(P3.1.b) Conjecture: All the Toeplitz minors of the sequence \((n! \; e_n({\bf X} ) e_n({\bf Y} ))_{n\geq 0}\) are monomial-positive in \({\bf X} \) and \({\bf Y} \).

(P3.1.c) Conjecture: All the Toeplitz minors of the sequence \((n!^{p} \; e_n({\bf X} ) e_n({\bf Y} ) e_n({\bf Z} ))_{n\geq 0}\) are monomial-positive in \({\bf X} \), \({\bf Y} \) and \({\bf Z} \) for \(p=0,1,2\).


Open
P3.2 Most general conjectures for factorial Hadamard product

For \(k\geq 2\) and \(1\leq m\leq k\) consider sequence of indeterminates \({\bf X^{(m)}} = (x_i^{(m)})_{i\geq 0} \).

Conjecture: For \(p = 0,1,\ldots,k-1\), all the Toeplitz minors of the sequence \((n!^p \; \prod_{m=1}^k e_n({\bf X^{(m)}} ))_{n\geq 0}\) are monomial-positive in all indeterminates.


Remark:

For Conjecture P3.1, and more generally for Conjecture P3.2 at \(p=0\), Angarone, Kim, Oh and Soskin (2025) showed that certain minors indexed by skew shapes not containing any \(3\times 2\) block of cells are not only monomial positive, but also Schur positive.

Open
P3.3 Conjecture for Laguerre composition

Conjecture: Fix \(M\geq 1\). Then the Toeplitz minors of the sequence \(\left(\prod_{i=1}^M (a_i + b_i n) e_n({\bf X})\right)_{n\geq 0}\) are monomial-positive in \({\bf X}\), coefficientwise in the \(a_i\) and \(b_i\).


Open
P3.4 Variant conjecture for Laguerre composition

Conjecture: The Toeplitz minors of the sequence \(\left(c_n e_n({\bf X})\right)_{n\geq 0}\) are monomial-positive in \({\bf X}\), whenever \((c_n)_{n\geq 0}\) are real numbers with \(\sum_{n=0}^\infty \dfrac{c_n}{n!} t^n \in LP^{+}\).


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