I am looking for a reference for the following fact which must be classical (which makes it harder, for me, to track a reference down). I am interested because there are similar (more complicated) statements about the cohomology of symmetric groups.


If $P$ is a partition, namely $p\_{1} + \cdots + p\_{k} = n$, we let $\rho\_{P}$ denote 
the permutation representation of $S\_{n}$, induced up from the trivial representation of $S\_{P}$. 


If $P$ and $Q$ are partitions of $n$ then consider any matrix $\hat{A}$ with nonnegative integer entries such that the entries
of $i$th row of $A$ add up to $p\_{i}$ and those of the $j$th column of $A$ add up to $q\_{j}$. Then the entries of $\hat{A}$
form another partition of $n$, which we call $A$ and say that $A$ is a product-refinement of $P$ and $Q$. For example if $P = Q = 1 + 2$ then two possibilities for $\hat{A}$ are $\begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix}$ and $\begin{pmatrix} 0 & 1 \\ 1 & 1 \end{pmatrix}$.


Proposition: If $\rho\_{P}$ and $\rho\_{Q}$ are permutation representations of $S\_n$ then $\rho\_{P} \otimes \rho\_{Q} \cong \bigoplus\_{A} \rho\_{A},$
where the sum is over $A$ which are product-refinements of $P$ and $Q$.


Questions: 1) what is the reference for this fact? and 2) what is standard terminology (for product-refinement in particular)?



Tensor products of permutation representations of symmetric groups.
Hi Dev,


It looks to me like a proof of this fact is given in the answer to Exercise 7.84(b) of Richard Stanley's Enumerative Combinatorics, volume 2, along with a reference to Example I.7.23(e), page 131, of I. G. Macdonald's Symmetric Functions and Hall Polynomials (2nd edition).


