TITLE: Making the branching rule for the symmetric group concrete
QUESTION [16 upvotes]: This question concerns the characteristic $0$ representation theory of the symmetric group $S_n$.  I'm a topologist, not a representation theorist, so I apologize if I state it in an odd way.
First, a bit of background.  The finite-dimensional irreducible representations of $S_n$ are given by the Specht modules $S^{\mu}$.  Here $\mu$ is a partition of $n$, which is best visualized as a Young diagram.  There are classical rules for restricting $S^{\mu}$ to $S_{n-1}$ and inducing $S^{\mu}$ to $S_{n+1}$ (these are known as branching rules).  Namely, we have the following.

The restriction of $S^{\mu}$ to $S_{n-1}$ is isomorphic to the direct sum of the $S_{n-1}$-representations $S^{\mu'}$ as $\mu'$ goes over all ways of removing a box from the Young diagram for $\mu$ (while staying in the world of Young diagrams).

The induction of $S^{\mu}$ to $S_{n+1}$ is isomorphic to the direct sum of the $S_{n+1}$-representations $S^{\mu'}$ as $\mu'$ goes over all ways of adding a box to the Young diagram for $\mu$ (again while staying in the world of Young diagrams).


These two rules are equivalent by Frobenius reciprocity.
There is a nice concrete proof of the restriction rule (I believe that it is due to Peel, though I first learned about it from James's book "The representation theory of the symmetric groups").  Assume that the rows of the Young diagram for $\mu$ from which we can remove a box are $r_1 < \ldots < r_k$, and denote by $\mu_i$ the partition of $n-1$ obtained by removing a box from the $r_i^{\text{th}}$ row of $\mu$.  There is then a sequence
$$0=V_0 \subset V_1 \subset \cdots \subset V_k = S^{\mu}$$
of $S_{n-1}$-modules such that $V_i/V_{i-1} \cong S^{\mu_i}$.  In fact, recalling that $S^{\mu}$ is generated by elements corresponding to Young tableaux of shape $\mu$ (known as polytabloids), the module $V_i$ is the subspace spanned by the polytabloids in which $n$ appears in a row between $1$ and $i$.
Question : Is there a similarly concrete proof of the induction rule (in particular, a proof which does not appeal to Frobenius reciprocity and the restriction rule)?

REPLY [5 votes]: I guess this is an old thread now, but I always thought that James' proof was a little indirect and not very explicit. A much nicer proof was given by Steen Ryom-Hansen in his paper “Grading the translation functors in type A.” Journal of Algebra 274, no. 1 (2004): 138–63; see arXiv:math/0301285.
To blow my own trumpet, a "cellular algebra" proof in the cyclotomic case (which includes the symmetric groups) is given in arXiv:0903.4493. For the corresponding result in the graded setting, following Ryom-Hansen, see arXiv:1008.1462.
All of these arguments work over arbitrary rings.