Combinatorial expansions for families of non-commutative k-Schur functions

We apply down operators in the affine nilCoxeter algebra to yield explicit combinatorial expansions for certain families of non-commutative k-Schur functions. This yields a combinatorial interpretation for a new family of k-Littlewood-Richardson coefficients.

Cyclic sieving for longest reduced words in the hyperoctahedral group

We show that the set R(w_0) of reduced expressions for the longest element in the hyperoctahedral group exhibits the cyclic sieving phenomenon. More specifically, R(w_0) possesses a natural cyclic action given by moving the first letter of a word to the end, and we show that the orbit structure of this action is encoded by the generating function for the major index on R(w_0).