Immanants of Totally Positive Matrices are Nonnegative

If/ is an irreducible character of Sn, these functions are known as immanants; if/ is an irreducible character of some subgroup G of Sn (extended trivially to all of Sn by defining /(vv) = 0 for w$G), these are known as generalized matrix functions. Note that the determinant and permanent are obtained by choosing / to be the sign character and trivial character of Sn, respectively. We should point out that it is more traditional to use /(vv) in (1) where we have used /(W). This change can be undone by transposing the matrix. If/ happens to be a character, then /(w) = x(w), so the generalized matrix function we have indexed by / is the complex conjugate of the traditional one. Since the characters of Sn are real (and integral), it follows that there is no difference between our indexing of immanants and the traditional one. It is convenient to associate with each AeMn(k) the following element of the group algebra kSn: [A]:= £ flliW(1)...flBiW(B)-w~\