A higher level Bailey lemma: proof and application (Q1273310)

The authors derive a very general form of the Bailey lemma that gives rise to new Bailey chains. Their work arises from the study of representations of Virasoro algebras and, in particular, fermionic representations of Virasoro characters. The Bailey chains that they find are indexed by partitions. The standard Bailey chains used by Andrews, this reviewer, and others correspond either to the empty partition or to the single partition of 1. Given an arbitrary partition \(\lambda\) with largest part \(\lambda_1\), the structure of the identities that arise from their higher level Bailey lemma is \[ \begin{aligned} & {1 \over (q)_{\infty}} \sum_{j=-\infty}^{\infty} (-1)^j q^{\text{quadratic polynomial in } j} \sum_{\vec{\eta}} \text{rational fcn of } q \\ & = \sum_{r_1 \geq \cdots \geq r_{k-1} \geq 0} { q^{r_1^2/(\lambda_1 + 1) + r_2^2 + \cdots + r_{k-1}^2 + r_i + \cdots + r_{k-1}} \over (q)_{r_1-r_2} \cdots (q)_{r_{k-2} - r_{k-1}} (q^{2-\delta}; q^{2-\delta})_{r_{k-1}}} \\ & \qquad \times\;\sum_{\vec{n}} \text{rational fcn of } q, \end{aligned} \] where the inner summations are over lattice points in \(\mathbb Z^{\lambda_1}\).