A Specht Module Analog for the Rook Monoid

The wealth of beautiful combinatorics that arise in the representation theory of the symmetric group is well-known. In this paper, we analyze the representations of a related algebraic structure called the rook monoid from a combinatorial angle. In particular, we give a combinatorial construction of the irreducible representations of the rook monoid. Since the rook monoid contains the symmetric group, it is perhaps not surprising that the construction outlined in this paper is very similar to the classic combinatorial construction of the irreducible Sn-representations: namely, the Specht modules.