Recursion Relations for Unitary Integrals, Combinatorics and the Toeplitz Lattice

Abstract

In a discussion in spring 2001, Alexei Borodin showed us recursion relations for the Toeplitz determinants going with the symbols e t(z + z−1) and \!. Borodin obtained these relations using Riemann-Hilbert methods; see the recent work of Borodin B and Baik Baik. The nature of Borodin's recursion relations pointed towards the Toeplitz lattice and its Virasoro algebra, introduced by us in AvM1. In this paper, we take the Toeplitz lattice and Virasoro algebra approach for a fairly large class of symbols, leading to a systematic way of generating recursion relations. The latter are very naturally expressed in terms of the L-matrices appearing in the Toeplitz lattice equations. As a surprise, we find, compared to Borodin's, a different set of relations, except for the 3-step relations associated with the symbol e t(z + z−1) . The Painlevé analysis of the Toeplitz lattice enables us to show the ``singularity confinement'' for these recursion relations.