Characters and composition factor multiplicities for the Lie superalgebra \({\mathfrak{gl}}(m/n)\) (Q1283350)

The Kac-Weyl character formula gives the characters of the so called typical irreducible modules of the basic classical Lie superalgebras and the problem for obtaining a character formula for the remaining atypical modules has been the subject of intensive investigation both in mathematics and physics literature. With the recent solution for the characters of simple \({\mathfrak g}{\mathfrak l}(m/n)\)-modules given in [\textit{V. Serganova}, Sel. Math., New Ser. 2, 607-651 (1996; Zbl 0881.17005)], the characters of all simple modules of type I Lie superalgebras are known in principle. In the atypical case, the Kac module \(V_{\lambda}\) corresponding to a highest weight \(\lambda\) is indecomposable and the simple module \(L_{\lambda}\) is the quotient of \(V_{\lambda}\) by its unique maximal submodule. Let \(a_{\lambda,\mu}\) be the multiplicity of \(L_{\mu}\) in the composition series of \(V_{\lambda}\). The method of Serganova for computing the \(a_{\lambda,\mu}\)'s, though straightforward, is not easy to apply and does not shed much light on the properties of the coefficients \(a_{\lambda,\mu}\). The goal of the paper under review is to announce some results on the multiplicities \(a_{\lambda,\mu}\) and to show that the structure of the matrix \(A=(a_{\lambda,\mu})\) which seems extremely complicated when rows are considered, is in fact very simple when concentrating on columns. The authors make the conjecture that all coefficients \(a_{\lambda,\mu}\) are equal either to 0 or to 1 and give easy algorithm for finding the nonzero \(a_{\lambda,\mu}\). They also present a conjecture giving the inverse matrix \(A(q)=(a_{\lambda,\mu}(q))\) of the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials \(K_q=(K_{\lambda,\mu}(q))\). The authors have the proofs of the conjectures only in some cases but their arguments do not work in the general case. However, with all data deduced by means of the algorithm of Serganova it is reasonable to expect that the conjectures are true.