• 1 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science

Since every even power of the Vandermonde determinant is a symmetric polynomial, we want to understand its decomposition in terms of the basis of Schur functions. We investigate several combinatorial properties of the coefficients in the decomposition. In particular, I will give a recursive approach for computing the coefficient of the Schur function $s_μ$ in the decomposition of an even power of the Vandermonde determinant in $n+1$ variables in terms of the coefficient of the Schur function $s_λ$ in the decomposition of the same even power of the Vandermonde determinant in $n$ variables if the Young diagram of $μ$ is obtained from the Young diagram of $λ$ by adding a tetris type shape to the top or to the left.