Ring of symmetric functions

In algebra and in particular in algebraic combinatorics, the ring of symmetric functions is a specific limit of the rings of symmetric polynomials in "n" indeterminates, as "n" goes to infinity. This ring serves as universal structure in which relations between symmetric polynomials can be expressed in a way independent of the number "n" of indeterminates (but its elements are neither polynomials nor functions). Among other things, this ring plays an important role in the representation theory of the symmetric group.
The ring of symmetric functions can be given a coproduct and a bilinear form making it into a positive selfadjoint graded Hopf algebra that is both commutative and cocommutative.
Symmetric polynomials.
The study of symmetric functions is based on that of symmetric polynomials. In a polynomial ring in some finite set of indeterminates, a polynomial is called "symmetric" if it stays the same whenever the indeterminates are permuted in any way. More formally, there is an action by ring automorphisms of the symmetric group "Sn" on the polynomial ring in "n" indeterminates, where a permutation acts on a polynomial by simultaneously substituting each of the indeterminates for another according to the permutation used. The invariants for this action form the subring of symmetric polynomials. If the indeterminates are "X"1...,"X""n", then examples of such symmetric polynomials are
and
A somewhat more complicated example is
"X"13"X"2"X"3 +"X"1"X"23"X"3 +"X"1"X"2"X"33 +"X"13"X"2"X"4 +"X"1"X"23"X"4 +"X"1"X"2"X"43 +...
where the summation goes on to include all products of the third power of some variable and two other variables. There are many specific kinds of symmetric polynomials, such as elementary symmetric polynomials, power sum symmetric polynomials, monomial symmetric polynomials, complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials, and Schur polynomials.
The ring of symmetric functions.
Most relations between symmetric polynomials do not depend on the number "n" of indeterminates, other than that some polynomials in the relation might require "n" to be large enough in order to be defined. For instance the Newton's identity for the third power sum polynomial "p3" leads to
where the formula_5 denote elementary symmetric polynomials; this formula is valid for all natural numbers "n", and the only notable dependency on it is that "e""k"("X"1...,"X""n") = 0 whenever "n" < "k". One would like to write this as an identity 
that does not depend on "n" at all, and this can be done in the ring of symmetric functions. In that ring there are elements "e""k" for all integers "k" ≥ 1, and any element of the ring can be given by a polynomial expression in the elements "e""k".
Definitions.
A ring of symmetric functions can be defined over any commutative ring "R", and will be denoted Λ"R"; the basic case is for "R" = Z. The ring Λ"R" is in fact a graded "R"-algebra. There are two main constructions for it; the first one given below can be found in (Stanley, 1999), and the second is essentially the one given in (Macdonald, 1979).
As a ring of formal power series.
The easiest (though somewhat heavy) construction starts with the ring of formal power series formula_7 over "R" in infinitely (countably) many indeterminates; the elements of this power series ring are formal infinite sums of terms, each of which consists of a coefficient from "R" multiplied by a monomial, where each monomial is a product of finitely many finite powers of indeterminates. One defines Λ"R" as its subring consisting of those power series "S" that satisfy 
Note that because of the second condition, power series are used here only to allow infinitely many terms of a fixed degree, rather than to sum terms of all possible degrees. Allowing this is necessary because an element that contains for instance a term "X"1 should also contain a term "X""i" for every "i" > 1 in order to be symmetric. Unlike the whole power series ring, the subring Λ"R" is graded by the total degree of monomials: due to condition 2, every element of Λ"R" is a finite sum of homogeneous elements of Λ"R" (which are themselves infinite sums of terms of equal degree). For every "k" ≥ 0, the element "e""k" ∈ Λ"R" is defined as the formal sum of all products of "k" distinct indeterminates, which is clearly homogeneous of degree "k".
As an algebraic limit.
Another construction of Λ"R" takes somewhat longer to describe, but better indicates the relationship with the rings "R"["X"1...,"X""n"]S"n" of symmetric polynomials in "n" indeterminates. For every "n" there is a surjective ring homomorphism ρ"n" from the analogous ring "R"["X"1...,"X""n"+1]S"n"+1 with one more indeterminate onto "R"["X"1...,"X""n"]S"n", defined by setting the last indeterminate "X""n"+1 to 0. Although ρ"n" has a non-trivial kernel, the nonzero elements of that kernel have degree at least formula_8 (they are multiples of "X"1"X"2..."X""n"+1). This means that the restriction of ρ"n" to elements of degree at most "n" is a bijective linear map, and ρ"n"("e""k"("X"1...,"X""n"+1)) = "e""k"("X"1...,"X""n") for all "k" ≤ "n". The inverse of this restriction can be extended uniquely to a ring homomorphism φ"n" from "R"["X"1...,"X""n"]S"n" to "R"["X"1...,"X""n"+1]S"n"+1, as follows for instance from the fundamental theorem of symmetric polynomials. Since the images φ"n"("e""k"("X"1...,"X""n")) = "e""k"("X"1...,"X""n"+1) for "k" = 1...,"n" are still algebraically independent over "R", the homomorphism φ"n" is injective and can be viewed as a (somewhat unusual) inclusion of rings; applying φ"n" to a polynomial amounts to adding all monomials containing the new indeterminate obtained by symmetry from monomials already present. The ring Λ"R" is then the "union" (direct limit) of all these rings subject to these inclusions. Since all φ"n" are compatible with the grading by total degree of the rings involved, Λ"R" obtains the structure of a graded ring.
This construction differs slightly from the one in (Macdonald, 1979). That construction only uses the surjective morphisms ρ"n" without mentioning the injective morphisms φ"n": it constructs the homogeneous components of Λ"R" separately, and equips their direct sum with a ring structure using the ρ"n". It is also observed that the result can be described as an inverse limit in the category of "graded" rings. That description however somewhat obscures an important property typical for a "direct" limit of injective morphisms, namely that every individual element (symmetric function) is already faithfully represented in some object used in the limit construction, here a ring "R"["X"1...,"X""d"]S"d". It suffices to take for "d" the degree of the symmetric function, since the part in degree "d" of that ring is mapped isomorphically to rings with more indeterminates by φ"n" for all "n" ≥ "d". This implies that for studying relations between individual elements, there is no fundamental difference between symmetric polynomials and symmetric functions.
Defining individual symmetric functions.
The name "symmetric function" for elements of Λ"R" is a misnomer: in neither construction the elements are functions, and in fact, unlike symmetric polynomials, no function of independent variables can be associated to such elements (for instance "e"1 would be the sum of all infinitely many variables, which is not defined unless restrictions are imposed on the variables). However the name is traditional and well established; it can be found both in (Macdonald, 1979), which says (footnote on p. 12)
The elements of Λ (unlike those of Λ"n") are no longer polynomials: they are formal infinite sums of monomials. We have therefore reverted to the older terminology of symmetric functions.
(here Λ"n" denotes the ring of symmetric polynomials in "n" indeterminates), and also in (Stanley, 1999).
To define a symmetric function one must either indicate directly a power series as in the first construction, or give a symmetric polynomial in "n" indeterminates for every natural number "n" in a way compatible with the second construction. An expression in an unspecified number of indeterminates may do both, for instance
can be taken as the definition of an elementary symmetric function if the number of indeterminates is infinite, or as the definition of an elementary symmetric polynomial in any finite number of indeterminates. Symmetric polynomials for the same symmetric function should be compatible with the morphisms ρ"n" (decreasing the number of indeterminates is obtained by setting some of them to zero, so that the coefficients of any monomial in the remaining indeterminates is unchanged), and their degree should remain bounded. (An example of a family of symmetric polynomials that fails both conditions is formula_10; the family formula_11 fails only the second condition.) Any symmetric polynomial in "n" indeterminates can be used to construct a compatible family of symmetric polynomials, using the morphisms ρ"i" for "i" < "n" to decrease the number of indeterminates, and φ"i" for "i" ≥ "n" to increase the number of indeterminates (which amounts to adding all monomials in new indeterminates obtained by symmetry from monomials already present).
The following are fundamental examples of symmetric functions.
There is no power sum symmetric function "p"0: although it is possible (and in some contexts natural) to define formula_14 as a symmetric "polynomial" in "n" variables, these values are not compatible with the morphisms ρ"n". The "discriminant" formula_15 is another example of an expression giving a symmetric polynomial for all "n", but not defining any symmetric function. The expressions defining Schur polynomials as a quotient of alternating polynomials are somewhat similar to that for the discriminant, but the polynomials "s"λ("X"1...,"X""n") turn out to be compatible for varying "n", and therefore do define a symmetric function.
A principle relating symmetric polynomials and symmetric functions.
For any symmetric function "P", the corresponding symmetric polynomials in "n" indeterminates for any natural number "n" may be designated by "P"("X"1...,"X""n"). The second definition of the ring of symmetric functions implies the following fundamental principle:
This is because one can always reduce the number of variables by substituting zero for some variables, and one can increase the number of variables by applying the homomorphisms φ"n"; the definition of those homomorphisms assures that φ"n"("P"("X"1...,"X""n")) = "P"("X"1...,"X""n"+1) (and similarly for "Q") whenever "n" ≥ "d". See a proof of Newton's identities for an effective application of this principle.
Properties of the ring of symmetric functions.
Identities.
The ring of symmetric functions is a convenient tool for writing identities between symmetric polynomials that are independent of the number of indeterminates: in Λ"R" there is no such number, yet by the above principle any identity in Λ"R" automatically gives identities the rings of symmetric polynomials over "R" in any number of indeterminates. Some fundamental identities are
which shows a symmetry between elementary and complete homogeneous symmetric functions; these relations are explained under complete homogeneous symmetric polynomial.
the Newton identities, which also have a variant for complete homogeneous symmetric functions:
Structural properties of Λ"R".
Important properties of Λ"R" include the following.
Property 2 is the essence of the fundamental theorem of symmetric polynomials. It immediately implies some other properties:
This final point applies in particular to the family ("h""i")"i">0 of complete homogeneous symmetric functions. 
If "R" contains the field formula_21 of rational numbers, it applies also to the family ("p""i")"i">0 of power sum symmetric functions. This explains why the first "n" elements of each of these families define sets of symmetric polynomials in "n" variables that are free polynomial generators of that ring of symmetric polynomials.
The fact that the complete homogeneous symmetric functions form a set of free polynomial generators of Λ"R" already shows the existence of an automorphism ω sending the elementary symmetric functions to the complete homogeneous ones, as mentioned in property 3. The fact that ω is an involution of Λ"R" follows from the symmetry between elementary and complete homogeneous symmetric functions expressed by the first set of relations given above.
The ring of symmetric functions ΛZ is the Exp ring of the integers Z. It is also a lambda-ring in a natural fashion; in fact it is the universal lambda-ring in one generator.
Generating functions.
The first definition of Λ"R" as a subring of formula_22 allows the generating functions of several sequences of symmetric functions to be elegantly expressed. Contrary to the relations mentioned earlier, which are internal to Λ"R", these expressions involve operations taking place in "R""X"1,"X"2...;"t" but outside its subring Λ"R", so they are meaningful only if symmetric functions are viewed as formal power series in indeterminates "X""i". We shall write "("X")" after the symmetric functions to stress this interpretation.
The generating function for the elementary symmetric functions is
Similarly one has for complete homogeneous symmetric functions
The obvious fact that formula_25 explains the symmetry between elementary and complete homogeneous symmetric functions.
The generating function for the power sum symmetric functions can be expressed as
((Macdonald, 1979) defines "P"("t") as Σ"k">0 "p""k"("X")"t""k"−1, and its expressions therefore lack a factor "t" with respect to those given here). The two final expressions, involving the formal derivatives of the generating functions "E"("t") and "H"("t"), imply Newton's identities and their variants for the complete homogeneous symmetric functions. These expressions are sometimes written as
which amounts to the same, but requires that "R" contain the rational numbers, so that the logarithm of power series with constant term 1 is defined (by formula_28).