Noncommutative schur functions and their applications Original Research Article

We develop a theory of Schur functions in noncommuting variables, assuming commutation relations that are satisfied in many well-known associative algebras. As an application of our theory, we prove Schur-positivity and obtain generalized Littlewood-Richardson and Murnaghan-Nakayama rules for a large class of symmetric functions, including stable Schubert and Grothendieck polynomials.