Unique decomposition of tensor products of irreducible representations of simple algebraic groups (Q1772454)

This paper gives a proof of the following theorem. Let \(\mathfrak g\) be a simple Lie algebra over \(\mathbb C\) and \(V_i\), \(W_j\) be nontrivial irreducible finite dimensional representations of \(\mathfrak g\). Then if \(V_1\otimes \cdots \otimes V_n\cong W_1\otimes\cdots\otimes W_m\), then \(n=m\) and there is a permutation \(\tau\) so that \(V_i\cong W_{\tau(i)}\). The proof is done by induction on \(l=\text{rk}(\mathfrak g)\). The problem is studied by means of restricting the characters to a simple Lie subalgebra of rank \(l-1\). The numerator of the Weyl character formula is examined by expanding along characters of the central \(\mathfrak{gl}_1\) and looking at the terms with highest and second highest degree.