• 1 Brigham Young University
• 2 University of Southern California
• 3 Smith College [Northampton]

The $A_2$-spider category encodes the representation theory of the $sl_3$ quantum group. Kuperberg (1996) introduced a combinatorial version of this category, wherein morphisms are represented by planar graphs called $\textit{webs}$ and the subset of $\textit{reduced webs}$ forms bases for morphism spaces. A great deal of recent interest has focused on the combinatorics of invariant webs for tensors powers of $V^+$, the standard representation of the quantum group. In particular, the invariant webs for the 3$n$th tensor power of $V^+$ correspond bijectively to $[n,n,n]$ standard Young tableaux. Kuperberg originally defined this map in terms of a graphical algorithm, and subsequent papers of Khovanov–Kuperberg (1999) and Tymoczko (2012) introduce algorithms for computing the inverse. The main result of this paper is a redefinition of Kuperberg's map through the representation theory of the symmetric group. In the classical limit, the space of invariant webs carries a symmetric group action. We use this structure in conjunction with Vogan's generalized tau-invariant and Kazhdan–Lusztig theory to show that Kuperberg's map is a direct analogue of the Robinson–Schensted correspondence.