Stembridge's conjecture on total nonnegativity of monomial trace immanants

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Let nn be a positive integer, let λ⊢n\lambda\vdash n be a partition, and let ϕλ\phi^\lambda denote the corresponding monomial trace. For an n×nn\times n matrix xx, write Imm⁡ϕλ(x)\operatorname{Imm}_{\phi^\lambda}(x) for its monomial trace immanant. Stembridge's conjecture. For every partition λ⊢n\lambda\vdash n, the polynomial

Imm⁡ϕλ(x)\operatorname{Imm}_{\phi^\lambda}(x)

is totally nonnegative. The preceding corollary does not apply because ϕλ(inc⁡(P))<0\phi^\lambda(\operatorname{inc}(P))<0 for some partitions λ\lambda and posets PP; the conjecture asserts total nonnegativity nevertheless and is attributed in the source to Stembridge.

References

Primary source

Mark Skandera, “Hook immanantal inequalities for totally nonnegative matrices”, arXiv:2510.00327 (2025).

Additional references

4 papers in this index state this conjecture (2022–2025). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2508.20382, arXiv:2506.23082, arXiv:2205.14835.

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