We present a precise characterization of linear functional-repair storage codes in terms of admissible states, with each state made up from a collection of vector spaces over some fixed finite field. To illustrate the usefulness of our characterization, we provide several applications. We first describe a simple construction of functional-repair storage codes for a family of code parameters meeting the cutset bound outside the MBR and MSR points; these codes are conjectured to have optimal rate with respect to their repair locality. Then, we employ our characterization to develop a construction method to obtain functional repair codes for given parameters using symmetry groups, which can be used both to find new codes and to improve known ones. As an example of the latter use, we describe a beautiful functional-repair storage code that was found by this method, with parameters belonging to the family investigated earlier, which can be specified in terms of only eight different vector spaces.

We provide a characterization of the crystal bases for the quantum queer superalgebra recently introduced by Grantcharov et al.. This characterization is a combination of local queer axioms generalizing Stembridge's local axioms for crystal bases for simply-laced root systems, which were recently introduced by Assaf and Oguz, with further axioms and a new graph G characterizing the relations of the type A components of the queer crystal. We provide a counterexample to Assaf's and Oguz' conjecture that the local queer axioms uniquely characterize the queer supercrystal. We obtain a combinatorial description of the graph G on the type A components by providing explicit combinatorial rules for the odd queer operators on certain highest weight elements.

We introduce a type $A$ crystal structure on decreasing factorizations of fully-commu\-tative elements in the 0-Hecke monoid which we call $\star$-crystal. This crystal is a $K$-theoretic generalization of the crystal on decreasing factorizations in the symmetric group of the first and last author. We prove that under the residue map the $\star$-crystal intertwines with the crystal on set-valued tableaux recently introduced by Monical, Pechenik and Scrimshaw. We also define a new insertion from decreasing factorization to pairs of semistandard Young tableaux and prove several properties, such as its relation to the Hecke insertion and the uncrowding algorithm. The new insertion also intertwines with the crystal operators.

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Whereas set-valued tableaux are the combinatorial objects associated to stable Grothendieck polynomials, hook-valued tableaux are associated with stable canonical Grothendieck polynomials. In this paper, we define a novel uncrowding algorithm for hook-valued tableaux. The algorithm “uncrowds” the entries in the arm of the hooks, and yields a set-valued tableau and a column-flagged increasing tableau. We prove that our uncrowding algorithm intertwines with crystal operators. An alternative uncrowding algorithm that “uncrowds” the entries in the leg instead of the arm of the hooks is also given. As an application of uncrowding, we obtain various expansions of the canonical Grothendieck polynomials.