The Selberg integral and Young books

Abstract

The Selberg integral is an important integral first evaluated by Selberg in 1944. Stanley found a combinatorial interpretation of the Selberg integral in terms of permutations. In this paper, new combinatorial objects "Young books" are introduced and shown to have a connection with the Selberg integral. This connection gives an enumeration formula for Young books. It is shown that special cases of Young books become standard Young tableaux of various shapes: shifted staircases, squares, certain skew shapes, and certain truncated shapes. As a consequence, product formulas for the number of standard Young tableaux of these shapes are obtained.