Hunt for 3-Schur polynomials

Abstract

This paper describes our attempt to understand the recent success of Na Wang in constructing the 3-Schur polynomials, associated with the plane partitions. We provide a rather detailed review and try to figure out the new insights, which allowed to overcome the problems of the previous efforts. In result we provide a very simple definition of time-variables ${\bf P}_{i\geqslant j}$ and the cut-and-join operator $\hat W_2$, which generates the set of $3$-Schur functions. Some coefficients in $\hat W_2$ remain undefined and require more effort to be fixed.