The maximal subgroup of unipotent upper-triangular matrices of the finite general linear groups are a fundamental family of $p$-groups. Their representation theory is well-known to be wild, but there is a standard supercharacter theory, replacing irr
educible representations by super-representations, that gives us some control over its representation theory. While this theory has a beautiful underlying combinatorics built on set partitions, the structure constants of restricted super-representations remain mysterious. This paper proposes a new approach to solving the restriction problem by constructing natural intermediate modules that help factor the computation of the structure constants. We illustrate the technique by solving the problem completely in the case of rainbow supercharacters (and some generalizations). Along the way we introduce a new $q$-analogue of the binomial coefficients that depend on an underlying poset.
From a recent paper, we recall the Hopf monoid structure on the supercharacters of the unipotent uppertriangular groups over a finite field. We give cancelation free formula for the antipode applied to the bases of class functions and power sum funct
ions, giving new cancelation free formulae for the standard Hopf algebra of supercharacters and symmetric functions in noncommuting variables. We also give partial results for the antipode on the supercharacter basis, and explicitly describe the primitives of this Hopf monoid.
