Cyclic sieving, promotion, and representation theory

Brendon Rhoades

Published 2010-05-14Version 1

We prove a collection of conjectures of D. White \cite{WComm}, as well as some related conjectures of Abuzzahab-Korson-Li-Meyer \cite{AKLM} and of Reiner and White \cite{ReinerComm}, \cite{WComm}, regarding the cyclic sieving phenomenon of Reiner, Stanton, and White \cite{RSWCSP} as it applies to jeu-de-taquin promotion on rectangular tableaux. To do this, we use Kazhdan-Lusztig theory and a characterization of the dual canonical basis of $\mathbb{C}[x_{11}, ..., x_{nn}]$ due to Skandera \cite{SkanNNDCB}. Afterwards, we extend our results to analyzing the fixed points of a dihedral action on rectangular tableaux generated by promotion and evacuation, suggesting a possible sieving phenomenon for dihedral groups. Finally, we give applications of this theory to cyclic sieving phenomena involving reduced words for the long elements of hyperoctohedral groups and noncrossing partitions.