Macdonald operators at infinity

We construct a family of pairwise commuting operators such that the Macdonald symmetric functions of infinitely many variables x ₁,x ₂,… and of two parameters q,t are their eigenfunctions. These operators are defined as limits at N→∞ of renormalized Macdonald operators acting on symmetric polynomials in the variables x ₁,…,x _N . They are differential operators in terms of the power sum variables (p_{n}=x_{1}^{n}+x_{2}^{n}+cdots) and we compute their symbols by using the Macdonald reproducing kernel. We express these symbols in terms of the Hall–Littlewood symmetric functions of the variables x ₁,x ₂,…. Our result also yields elementary step operators for the Macdonald symmetric functions.