Riemann-Hilbert problem and the discrete Bessel kernel

Abstract

We use discrete analogs of Riemann-Hilbert problem's methods to derive the discrete Bessel kernel which describes the poissonized Plancherel measures for symmetric groups. To do this we define discrete analogs of a Riemann-Hilbert problem and of an integrable integral operator and show that computing the resolvent of a discrete integrable operator can be reduced to solving a corresponding discrete Riemann-Hilbert problem. We also give an example, explicitly solvable in terms of classical special functions, when a discrete Riemann-Hilbert problem converges in a certain scaling limit to a conventional one; the example originates from the representation theory of the infinite symmetric group.