Iwahori-Hecke algebras of type \(A\) at roots of unity (Q1295943)

Let \(H_n(q)\) be the Iwahori-Hecke algebra of type \(A_{n-1}\) over a field \(K\) of characteristic \(0\). For each Young diagram \(\lambda\), an \(H_n(q)\) module \(S^{\lambda}\), called a Specht module, was defined. The dimension of \(S^{\lambda}\) does not depend on the choice of \(q\), and for \(q\) not a root of unity, the \(S^{\lambda}\)'s provide a complete set of irreducible \(H_n(q)\)-modules, up to isomorphism. If \(q\) is a primitive \(l\)-th root of unity, a complete set of simple \(H_n(q)\)-modules \(D^{\mu}\) was constructed, where \(\mu\) runs though all Young diagrams with at most \(l-1\) rows of equal length. In this paper, the authors explore the use of path idempotents for the Hecke algebra at roots of unity. The path idempotents are defined via the orthogonal representation, which is not well defined at roots of unity. But they show that certain sums of path idempotents are still well defined at roots of unity and can be used to derive information about simple modules and decomposition numbers at roots of unity. Their main technical result concerns a (non-unital) embedding of the (\(k\)-row quotient of the) Hecke algebra \(H_m(x^l)\) defined over the field of rational functions \(K(x)\) into the (\(k\)-row quotient of the) Hecke algebra \(H_n(x)\), for certain \(m\) and \(n\). If \(q\) is a primitive \(l\)-th root of unity, this gives an embedding of \(KS_m\) into \(H_n(q)\). From this, they showed that \(S^{\lambda}=D^{\lambda}\) for certain Young diagrams, and obtain estimates on the decomposition number \(d_{\lambda\mu}\) which provide rather good geometric information about the coefficients and in particular about the set of \(\lambda\) for which \(d_{\lambda\mu}=0\) .