Given a graph whose edges are labeled by ideals in a ring, a generalized spline is a labeling of each vertex by a ring element so that adjacent vertices differ by an element of the ideal associated to the edge. We study splines over the ring Z/mZ. Previous work considered splines over domains, in which very different phenomena occur. For instance when the ring is the integers, the elements of bases for spline modules are indexed by the vertices of the graph. However we prove that over Z/mZ spline modules can essentially have any rank between 1 and n. Using the classification of finite Z-modules, we begin the work of classifying splines over Z/mZ and produce minimum generating sets for splines on cycles over Z/mZ. We close with many open questions.
Combinatorial spiders are a model for the invariant space of the tensor product of representations. The basic objects, webs, are certain directed planar graphs with boundary; algebraic operations on representations correspond to graph-theoretic operations on webs. Kuperberg developed spiders for rank 2 Lie algebras and sl_2. Building on a result of Kuperbergs, Khovanov-Kuperberg found a recursive algorithm giving a bijection between standard Young tableaux of shape (n,n,n) and irreducible webs for sl_3 whose boundary vertices are all sources. In this paper, we give a simple and explicit map from standard Young tableaux of shape (n,n,n) to irreducible webs for sl_3 whose boundary vertices are all sources, and show that it is the same as Khovanov-Kuperbergs map. Our construction generalizes to some webs with both sources and sinks on the boundary. Moreover, it allows us to extend the correspondence between webs and tableaux in two ways. First, we provide a short, geometric proof of Petersen-Pylyavskyy-Rhoadess recent result that rotation of webs corresponds to jeu-de-taquin promotion on (n,n,n) tableaux. Second, we define another natural operation on tableaux called a shuffle, and show that it corresponds to the join of two webs. Our main tool is an intermediary object between tableaux and webs that we call an m-diagram. The construction of m-diagrams, like many of our results, applies to shapes of tableaux other than (n,n,n).
Regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties are a family of subvarieties of the flag variety that arise in number theory, numerical analysis, representation theory, algebraic geometry, and combinatorics. We give a Giambelli formula expressing the classes of regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties in terms of Chern classes. In fact, we show that the cohomology class of each regular semisimple Hessenberg variety is the specialization of a certain double Schubert polynomial, giving a natural geometric interpretation to such specializations. We also decompose such classes in terms of the Schubert basis for the cohomology ring of the flag variety. The coefficients obtained are nonnegative, and we give closed combinatorial formulas for the coefficients in many cases. We introduce a closely related family of schemes called regular nilpotent Hessenberg schemes, and use our results to determine when such schemes are reduced.
