Irreducible Characters for the Symmetric Groups and Kostka Matrices

Abstract

In an earlier paper [1] it was shown that the Frobenius compound characters for the symmetric groups are related to the irreducible characters by a linear relation that involves a unitriagular coupling matrix that gives the Frobenius characters in terms of linear combinations of the irreducible characters. It is desirable to invert this relationship since we have formulas for the Frobenius characters and want the values for the irreducible characters. This inversion is straightforward and yields both the irreducible characters but also the coupling matrix that turns out to be the Kostka matrix in the original direction. We show that if the Frobenius monomial identity is applied a modification of it, equation (22), produces a monomial formula that produces the Kostka matrix inverse without involving the characters of either type. However it is a formidable task to execute this procedure for symmetric groups of even modest order. Alternatively the inversion by means of the unitriangular coupling matrix produces the Kostka matrix and the irreducible characters simultaneously and with much less effort than required for the monomial approach. Moreover there is a surprise.