Hook, line and sinker: a bijective proof of the skew shifted hook-length formula

Abstract: A few years ago, Naruse presented a beautiful cancellation-free hook-length formula for skew shapes, both straight and shifted. The formula involves a sum over objects called \emph{excited diagrams}, and the term corresponding to each excited diagram has hook lengths in the denominator, like the classical hook-length formula due to Frame, Robinson and Thrall. Recently, the formula for skew straight shapes was proved via a simple bumping algorithm. The aim of this paper is to extend this result to skew shifted shapes. Since straight skew shapes are special cases of skew shifted shapes, this is a bijection that proves the whole family of hook-length formulas, and is also the simplest known bijective proof for shifted (non-skew) shapes. A weighted generalization of Naruse's formula is also presented.