We give explicit presentations of the integral equivariant cohomology of the affine Grassmannians and flag varieties in type A, arising from their natural embeddings in the corresponding infinite (Sato) Grassmannian and flag variety. These presentations are compared with results obtained by Lam and Shimozono, for rational equivariant cohomology of the affine Grassmannian, and by Larson, for the integral cohomology of the moduli stack of vector bundles on .

We give a new proof of the Hansen–Mullen irreducibility conjecture. The proof relies on an application of a (seemingly new) sufficient condition for the existence of elements of degree $n$ in the support of functions on finite fields. This connection to irreducible polynomials is made via the least period of the discrete Fourier transform $\left( \text{DFT} \right)$ of functions with values in finite fields. We exploit this relation and prove, in an elementary fashion, that a relevant function related to the $\text{DFT}$ of characteristic elementary symmetric functions (that produce the coefficients of characteristic polynomials) satisfies a simple requirement on the least period. This bears a sharp contrast to previous techniques employed in the literature to tackle the existence of irreducible polynomials with prescribed coefficients.

We introduce a new basis of the algebra of non-commutative symmetric functions whose images under the forgetful map are Schur functions when indexed by a partition. Dually, we build a basis of the quasi-symmetric functions that expand positively in the fundamental quasi-symmetric functions. We then use the basis to construct a non-commutative lift of the Hall–Littlewood symmetric functions with similar properties to their commutative counterparts.

We determine the necessary and sufficient combinatorial conditions for which the tensor product of two irreducible polynomial representations of $\text{GL}\left( n,\,\mathbb{C} \right)$ is isomorphic to another. As a consequence we discover families of Littlewood–Richardson coefficients that are non-zero, and a condition on Schur non-negativity.

A combinatorial Hopf algebra is a graded connected Hopf algebra over a field $\Bbbk$ equipped with a character (multiplicative linear functional) $\zeta\colon{\mathcal H}\to \Bbbk$. We show that the terminal object in the category of combinatorial Hopf algebras is the algebra ${\mathcal Q}{\mathit{Sym}}$ of quasi-symmetric functions; this explains the ubiquity of quasi-symmetric functions as generating functions in combinatorics. We illustrate this with several examples. We prove that every character decomposes uniquely as a product of an even character and an odd character. Correspondingly, every combinatorial Hopf algebra $({\mathcal H},\zeta)$ possesses two canonical Hopf subalgebras on which the character $\zeta$ is even (respectively, odd). The odd subalgebra is defined by certain canonical relations which we call the generalized Dehn–Sommerville relations. We show that, for ${\mathcal H}={\mathcal Q}{\mathit{Sym}}$, the generalized Dehn–Sommerville relations are the Bayer–Billera relations and the odd subalgebra is the peak Hopf algebra of Stembridge. We prove that ${\mathcal Q}{\mathit{Sym}}$ is the product (in the categorical sense) of its even and odd Hopf subalgebras. We also calculate the odd subalgebras of various related combinatorial Hopf algebras: the Malvenuto–Reutenauer Hopf algebra of permutations, the Loday–Ronco Hopf algebra of planar binary trees, the Hopf algebras of symmetric functions and of non-commutative symmetric functions.

A homogeneous real polynomial $p$ is hyperbolic with respect to a given vector $d$ if the univariate polynomial $t\,\mapsto \,p(x\,-\,td)$ has all real roots for all vectors $x$. Motivated by partial differential equations, Gårding proved in 1951 that the largest such root is a convex function of $x$, and showed various ways of constructing new hyperbolic polynomials. We present a powerful new such construction, and use it to generalize Gårding’s result to arbitrary symmetric functions of the roots. Many classical and recent inequalities follow easily. We develop various convex-analytic tools for such symmetric functions, of interest in interior-point methods for optimization problems over related cones.