Asymptotics of Young Diagrams and Hook Numbers

Asymptotic calculations are applied to study the degrees of certain sequences of characters of symmetric groups. Starting with a given partition μ, we deduce several skew diagrams which are related to μ. To each such skew diagram there corresponds the product of its hook numbers. By asymptotic methods we obtain some unexpected arithmetic properties between these products. The authors do not know ”finite”, nonasymptotic proofs of these results. The problem appeared in the study of the hook formula for various kinds of Young diagrams. The proofs are based on properties of shifted Schur functions, due to Okounkov and Olshanski. The theory of these functions arose from the asymptotic theory of Vershik and Kerov of the representations of the symmetric groups. ∗ Work partially supported by N.S.F. Grant No.DMS-94-01197. † Partially supported by Grant INTAS 94-3420 and Russian Fund 96-01-00676 the electronic journal of combinatorics 4 no.1 (1997), #R22 2 §