Positivity for a $t$-analogue of refined Littlewood-Richardson rules

Abstract

In 2010, Haglund, Luoto, Mason and van Willigenburg proved that the product of a Schur function $s_λ$ and a Demazure atom $A_γ$ expands positively in terms of Demazure atoms, and interpreted the coefficients as the number of Littlewood-Richardson skew skyline tableaux of a given shape and a filling type. Extending this approach, they further established the positive expansion for the product of a Schur function $s_λ$ and a quasisymmetric Schur function $S_α$, or of a Schur function $s_λ$ and a Demazure character $κ_γ$. In particular, the latter provides a refinement of the classical Littlewood-Richardson rule. We present a natural $t$-analogue of these positive expansions by deriving the expansion for a product of a Hall-Littlewood polynomial $P_λ(t)$ and a $t$-Demazure atom $E_γ(t)$ in terms of $t$-Demazure atoms. The corresponding coefficients are $\mathbb{N}\,[t,1-t]$-positive; that is, they are polynomials with nonnegative integer coefficients in $t$ and $1-t$, and they are interpreted in terms of standard Young tableaux. We take the approach of connecting the multiplication coefficients with the LLT polynomials, which differs from the combinatorial insertion arguments of Haglund, Luoto, Mason and van Willigenburg.