Cauchy identities for staircase matrices

Abstract: The celebrated Cauchy identity expresses the product of terms $(1 - x_i y_j)^{-1}$ for $(i,j)$ indexing entries of a rectangular $m\times n$-matrix as a sum over partitions $\lambda$ of products of Schur polynomials: $s_{\lambda}(x)s_{\lambda}(y)$. Algebraically, this identity comes from the decomposition of the symmetric algebra of the space of rectangular matrices, considered as a $\mathfrak{gl}m$-$\mathfrak{gl}_n$-bi-module. We generalize the Cauchy decomposition by replacing rectangular matrices with arbitrary staircase-shaped matrices equipped with the left and right actions of the Borel upper-triangular subalgebras. For any given staircase shape $\mathsf{Y}$ we describe left and right "standard" filtrations on the symmetric algebra of the space of shape $\mathsf{Y}$ matrices. We show that the subquotients of these filtrations are tensor products of Demazure and opposite van der Kallen modules over the Borel subalgebras. On the level of characters, we derive three distinct expansions for the product $(1 - x_i y_j)^{-1}$ for $(i,j) \in \mathsf{Y}$. The first two expansions are sums of products of key polynomials $\kappa\lambda(x)$ and (opposite) Demazure atoms $a^{\mu}(y)$. The third expansion is an alternating sum of products of key polynomials $\kappa_{\lambda}(x)\,\kappa^{\mu}(y)$.