On the support of the free Lie algebra: the Schutzenberger problems

Abstract

Combinatorics M.-P. Schutzenberger asked to determine the support of the free Lie algebra L(Zm) (A) on a finite alphabet A over the ring Z(m) of integers mod m and all pairs of twin and anti-twin words, i.e., words that appear with equal (resp. opposite) coefficients in each Lie polynomial. We characterize the complement of the support of L(Zm) (A) in A* as the set of all words w such that m divides all the coefficients appearing in the monomials of l* (w), where l* is the adjoint endomorphism of the left normed Lie bracketing l of the free Lie ring. Calculating l* (w) via the shuffle product, we recover the well known result of Duchamp and Thibon (Discrete Math. 76 (1989) 123-132) for the support of the free Lie ring in a much more natural way. We conjecture that two words u and v of common length n, which lie in the support of the free Lie ring, are twin (resp. anti-twin) if and only if either u = v or n is odd and u = (v) over tilde (resp. if n is even and u = (v) over tilde), where (v) over tilde denotes the reversal of v and we prove that it suffices to show this for a two-lettered alphabet. These problems can be rephrased, for words of length n, in terms of the action of the Dynkin operator l(n) on lambda-tabloids, where lambda is a partition of n. Representing a word w in two letters by the subset I of [n] = \1, 2, ... , n\ that consists of all positions that one of the letters occurs in w, the computation of l* (w) leads us to the notion of the Pascal descent polynomial p(n)(I), a particular commutative multi-linear polynomial which is equal to the signed binomial coefficient when vertical bar I vertical bar = 1. We provide a recursion formula for p(n) (I) and show that if m inverted iota Sigma(i is an element of I)(1)(i-1) (n - 1 i - 1), then w lies in the support of L(Zm) (A).