A theorem of Feigin, Frenkel and Reshetikhin provides expressions for the eigenvalues of the higher Gaudin Hamiltonians on the Bethe vectors in terms of elements of the center of the affine vertex algebra at the critical level. In our recent work, explicit Harish-Chandra images of generators of the center were calculated in all classical types. We combine these results to calculate the eigenvalues of the higher Gaudin Hamiltonians on the Bethe vectors in an explicit form. The Harish-Chandra images can be interpreted as elements of classical $W$-algebras. We provide a direct connection between the rings of $q$-characters and classical $W$-algebras by calculating classical limits of the corresponding screening operators.
We introduce a family of rings of symmetric functions depending on an infinite sequence of parameters. A distinguished basis of such a ring is comprised by analogues of the Schur functions. The corresponding structure coefficients are polynomials in
the parameters which we call the Littlewood-Richardson polynomials. We give a combinatorial rule for their calculation by modifying an earlier result of B. Sagan and the author. The new rule provides a formula for these polynomials which is manifestly positive in the sense of W. Graham. We apply this formula for the calculation of the product of equivariant Schubert classes on Grassmannians which implies a stability property of the structure coefficients. The first manifestly positive formula for such an expansion was given by A. Knutson and T. Tao by using combinatorics of puzzles while the stability property was not apparent from that formula. We also use the Littlewood-Richardson polynomials to describe the multiplication rule in the algebra of the Casimir elements for the general linear Lie algebra in the basis of the quantum immanants constructed by A. Okounkov and G. Olshanski.
