Solution to an open problem on the computational complexity of immanant

Abstract

Immanants are a class of generalized matrix functions associated with the irreducible characters of the symmetric group. Bürgisser [SIAM J. Comput., 30 (2000), pp. 1023--1040] proved that the computation of hook immanants and immanants corresponding to rectangular Young diagrams of polynomially growing width is VNP-complete under $p$-projections. And he posed an open problem: whether the family of immanants corresponding to rectangular Young diagrams of width $2$ is VNP-complete under $p$-projections. This paper gives a solution to this problem. We prove that, over any field of characteristic zero, the immanant families associated with rectangular Young diagrams of width $2$ and of length $2$ are both VNP-complete under $p$-projections.