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The mysterious Littlewood-Richardson coefficients

Algebra & Discrete Mathematics

Speaker: Prof Igor Pak, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Mon, May 5 2014, 12:10PM

I will survey some recent work on Littlewood-Richardson (LR) coefficients and their generalizations, specifically Kronecker coefficients and various puzzles. I will describe which properties of LR-coefficients allow generalization, and which are unique and remain somewhat mysterious (the Knutson-Tao saturation theorem is one of them). I will also discuss a number of conjectures and open problems. Joint work with Greta Panova and Jed Yang. The talk is aimed at a general audience and if all goes well will be somewhat entertaining. However, if you haven't seen LR-coefficients before, you would be even more mystified than the rest of the audience.