We determine the necessary and sufficient combinatorial conditions for which the tensor product of two irreducible polynomial representations of $\GL(n,\mathbb{C})$ is isomorphic to another. As a consequence we discover families of Littlewood--Richardson coefficients that are non-zero, and a condition on Schur non-negativity.

Let $\scr S_r$ be the collection of all axially symmetric functions $f$ in the Sobolev space $H^1(\Sph^2)$ such that $\int_{\Sph^2} x_ie^{2f(\mathbf{x})} \, d\omega(\mathbf{x})$ vanishes for $i=1,2,3$. We prove that $$ \inf_{f\in \scr S_r} \frac12 \int_{\Sph^2} |\nabla f|^2 \, d\omega + 2\int_{\Sph^2} f \, d\omega- \log \int_{\Sph^2} e^{2f} \, d\omega > -\oo, $$ and that this infimum is attained. This complements recent work of Feldman, Froese, Ghoussoub and Gui on a conjecture of Chang and Yang concerning the Moser-Aubin inequality.