We review Stanley's seminal work on the number of reduced words of the longest element of the symmetric group and his Stanley symmetric functions. We shed new light on this by giving a crystal theoretic interpretation in terms of decreasing factorizations of permutations. Whereas crystal operators on tableaux are coplactic operators, the crystal operators on decreasing factorization intertwine with the Edelman-Greene insertion. We also view this from a random perspective and study a Markov chain on reduced words of the longest element in a finite Coxeter group, in particular the symmetric group, and mention a generalization to a poset setting.

Hatayama et al. conjectured fermionic formulas associated with tensor products of U'_q(g)-crystals B^{r,s}. The crystals B^{r,s} correspond to the Kirillov--Reshetikhin modules which are certain finite dimensional U'_q(g)-modules. In this paper we present a combinatorial description of the affine crystals B^{r,1} of type D_n^{(1)}. A statistic preserving bijection between crystal paths for these crystals and rigged configurations is given, thereby proving the fermionic formula in this case. This bijection reflects two different methods to solve lattice models in statistical mechanics: the corner-transfer-matrix method and the Bethe Ansatz.

We give a review of the current status of the X=M conjecture. Here X stands for the one-dimensional configuration sum and M for the corresponding fermionic formula. There are three main versions of this conjecture: the unrestricted, the classically restricted and the level-restricted version. We discuss all three versions and illustrate the methods of proof with many examples for type A_{n-1}^{(1)}. In particular, the combinatorial approach via crystal bases and rigged configurations is discussed. Each section ends with a conglomeration of open problems.

We provide the explicit combinatorial structure of the Kirillov-Reshetikhin crystals B^{r,s} of type D_n(1), B_n(1), and A_{2n-1}(2). This is achieved by constructing the crystal analogue sigma of the automorphism of the D_n(1) (resp. B_n(1) or A_{2n-1}(2)) Dynkin diagram that interchanges the 0 and 1 node. The involution sigma is defined in terms of new plus-minus diagrams that govern the D_n to D_{n-1} (resp. B_n to B_{n-1}, or C_n to C_{n-1}) branching. It is also shown that the crystal B^{r,s} is perfect. These crystals have been implemented in MuPAD-Combinat; the implementation is discussed in terms of many examples.

These notes arose from three lectures presented at the Summer School on Theoretical Physics "Symmetry and Structural Properties of Condensed Matter" held in Myczkowce, Poland, on September 11-18, 2002. We review rigged configurations and the Bethe Ansatz. In the first part, we focus on the algebraic Bethe Ansatz for the spin 1/2 XXX model and explain how rigged configurations label the solutions of the Bethe equations. This yields the bijection between rigged configurations and crystal paths/Young tableaux of Kerov, Kirillov and Reshetikhin. In the second part, we discuss a generalization of this bijection for the symmetry algebra $D_n^{(1)}$, based on work in collaboration with Okado and Shimozono.

Rigged configurations are combinatorial objects originating from the Bethe Ansatz, that label highest weight crystal elements. In this paper a new unrestricted set of rigged configurations is introduced for types ADE by constructing a crystal structure on the set of rigged configurations. In type A an explicit characterization of unrestricted rigged configurations is provided which leads to a new fermionic formula for unrestricted Kostka polynomials or q-supernomial coefficients. The affine crystal structure for type A is obtained as well.

q-Supernomial coefficients are generalizations of the q-binomial coefficients. They can be defined as the coefficients of the Hall-Littlewood symmetric function in a product of the complete symmetric functions or the elementary symmetric functions. Hatayama et al. give explicit expressions for these q-supernomial coefficients. A combinatorial expression as the generating function of ribbon tableaux with (co)spin statistic follows from the work of Lascoux, Leclerc and Thibon. In this paper we interpret the formulas by Hatayama et al. in terms of rigged configurations and provide an explicit statistic preserving bijection between rigged configurations and ribbon tableaux thereby establishing a new direct link between these combinatorial objects.

We apply crystal theory to affine Schubert calculus, Gromov-Witten invariants for the complete flag manifold, and the positroid stratification of the positive Grassmannian. We introduce operators on decompositions of elements in the type-$A$ affine Weyl group and produce a crystal reflecting the internal structure of the generalized Young modules whose Frobenius image is represented by stable Schubert polynomials. We apply the crystal framework to products of a Schur function with a $k$-Schur function, consequently proving that a subclass of 3-point Gromov-Witten invariants of complete flag varieties for $\mathbb C^n$ enumerate the highest weight elements under these operators. Included in this class are the Schubert structure constants in the (quantum) product of a Schubert polynomial with a Schur function $s_\lambda$ for all $|\lambda^\vee|< n$. Another by-product gives a highest weight formulation for various fusion coefficients of the Verlinde algebra and for the Schubert decomposition of certain positroid classes.

A new fermionic formula for the unrestricted Kostka polynomials of type $A_{n-1}^{(1)}$ is presented. This formula is different from the one given by Hatayama et al. and is valid for all crystal paths based on Kirillov-Reshetihkin modules, not just for the symmetric and anti-symmetric case. The fermionic formula can be interpreted in terms of a new set of unrestricted rigged configurations. For the proof a statistics preserving bijection from this new set of unrestricted rigged configurations to the set of unrestricted crystal paths is given which generalizes a bijection of Kirillov and Reshetikhin.

Stanley symmetric functions are the stable limits of Schubert polynomials. In this paper, we show that, conversely, Schubert polynomials are Demazure truncations of Stanley symmetric functions. This parallels the relationship between Schur functions and Demazure characters for the general linear group. We establish this connection by imposing a Demazure crystal structure on key tableaux, recently introduced by the first author in connection with Demazure characters and Schubert polynomials, and linking this to the type A crystal structure on reduced word factorizations, recently introduced by Morse and the second author in connection with Stanley symmetric functions.