On the generating function for intervals in Young's lattice

Abstract

In this paper, we study a family of generating functions whose coefficients are polynomials that enumerate partitions in lower order ideals of Young's lattice. Our main result is that this family satisfies a rational recursion and are therefore rational functions. As an application, we calculate the asymptotic behavior of the cardinality of lower order ideals for the ``average" partition of fixed length and give a homological interpretation of this result in relation to Grassmannians and their Schubert varieties.