Properties of four partial orders on standard Young tableaux

Let SYTn be the set of all standard Young tableaux with n cells. After recalling the definitions of four partial orders, the weak, KL, geometric and chain orders on SYTn and some of their crucial properties, we prove three main results:•Intervals in any of these four orders essentially describe the product in a Hopf algebra of tableaux defined by Poirier and Reutenauer.•The map sending a tableau to its descent set induces a homotopy equivalence of the proper parts of all of these orders on tableaux with that of the Boolean algebra 2[n−1]. In particular, the Möbius function of these orders on tableaux is (−1)n−3.•For two of the four orders, one can define a more general order on skew tableaux having fixed inner boundary, and similarly analyze their homotopy type and Möbius function.