REVIEW
Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.
SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event
T0 review · schema-true
One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.
pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp
An SOS counterexample to an inequality of symmetric functions
read the original abstract
It is known that differences of symmetric functions corresponding to various bases are nonnegative on the nonnegative orthant exactly when the partitions defining them are comparable in dominance order. The only exception is the case of homogeneous symmetric functions where it is only known that dominance of the partitions implies nonnegativity of the corresponding difference of symmetric functions. It was conjectured by Cuttler, Greene, and Skandera in 2011 that the converse also holds, as in the cases of the monomial, elementary, power-sum, and Schur bases. In this paper we provide a counterexample, showing that homogeneous symmetric functions break the pattern. We use semidefinite programming to find an explicit sums of squares decomposition of the polynomial $H_{44} - H_{521}$ as a sum of 41 squares. This rational certificate of nonnegativity disproves the conjecture, since a polynomial which is a sum of squares cannot be negative, and since the partitions 44 and 521 are incomparable in dominance order.
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.