Covering $\mathsf{Irrep}(S_n)$ With Tensor Products and Powers

Understand

We study when a tensor product of irreducible representations of the symmetric group $S_n$ contains all irreducibles as subrepresentations; we say such a tensor product covers $\mathsf{Irrep}(S_n)$.

• Our results show that this behavior is typical.
• We first give a general sufficient criterion for tensor products to have this property, which holds asymptotically almost surely for constant-sized collections of (Plancherel or uniformly) random irreducibles.
• We also consider the minimal tensor power of a single fixed irreducible representation needed to cover $\mathsf{Irrep}(S_n)$.