Combinatorial proof of a permuted basement Macdonald polynomial identity

Abstract

A well-known and fundamental property of the Macdonald polynomials $P_\lambda(x;q,t)$ is their invariance under the transformation sending $(q,t)$ to $(q^{-1},t^{-1})$. Recently, Concha and Lapointe showed that this property extends in an interesting, nontrivial way to an identity for partially symmetric Macdonald polynomials. Their identity played a key role in the work of Bechtloff Weising and Orr linking partially symmetric Macdonald polynomials to parabolic flag Hilbert schemes. In this paper, we refine the Concha-Lapointe identity to a sub-family of Alexandersson's permuted basement Macdonald polynomials and give a combinatorial proof of the refined identity. We show also that the Concha-Lapointe identity is equivalent to the assertion that (normalized) partially symmetric Macdonald polynomials are fixed under the Kazhdan-Lusztig involution.