Murnaghan--Nakayama rules for symplectic, orthogonal and orthosymplectic Schur functions

Abstract: We establish new Murnaghan--Nakayama rules for symplectic, orthogonal and orthosymplectic Schur functions. The classical Murnaghan--Nakayama rule expresses the product of a power sum symmetric function with a Schur function as a linear combination of Schur functions. Symplectic and orthogonal Schur functions correspond to characters of irreducible representations of symplectic and orthogonal groups. Orthosymplectic Schur functions arise as characters of orthosymplectic Lie superalgebras and are hybrids of symplectic and ordinary Schur functions. We derive explicit formulas for the product of the relevant power-sum function with each of these functions, which can partly be described combinatorially using border strip manipulations. Our Murnaghan--Nakayama rules each include three distinct terms: a classical term corresponding to the addition of border strips to the relevant Young diagram, a term involving the removal of border strips, and a third term, which we describe both algebraically and combinatorially.