On two presentations of the affine Weyl groups of classical types (Q1818842)

Besides the presentations as Coxeter groups (i.e., the ones by generators and relations over pairs of generators), there are many other presentations for the affine Weyl groups \(W_a\), in particular for those of the classical types, i.e., types \(\widetilde A_l\) (\(l\geq 1\)), \(\widetilde B_m\) (\(m\geq 3\)), \(\widetilde C_n\) (\(n\geq 2\)) and \(\widetilde D_k\) (\(k\geq 4\)). Two of these presentations are particularly useful: one is to regard \(W_a\) as a certain permutation group over the set of integers \(\mathbb{Z}\) (only applies for the classical types); the other is to identify \(W_a\) with the set of alcoves in a Euclidean space \(E\) after removing a certain set of hyperplanes (applies for all types). The relations between these two presentations have been explicitly described for the type \(\widetilde A_l\) [\textit{J.-y. Shi}, ``The Kazhdan-Lusztig cells in certain affine Weyl groups'', Lect. Notes Math. 1179 (1986; Zbl 0582.20030)], but not yet for the other classical types. In this paper, the author studies these relations for the cases of types \(\widetilde B_m\), \(\widetilde C_n\) and \(\widetilde D_k\). The main result is to obtain a transition formula between the permutation form and the alcove form of \(w\in W_a\) when the type of \(W_a\) belongs to these three families. The author gives two applications of the results. One is to show that when an affine Weyl group \(W_a\) is of classical type, the entries of the alcove form of \(w\in W_a\) exactly comprise the inverse table of \(w\) as defined by \textit{H. Eriksson} and \textit{K. Eriksson} [Electron. J. Comb. 5, No. 1, 231-262 (1998; Zbl 0889.20002)]. Thus the new characterization for the alcove form of \(w\in W_a\) gives a characterization for the inverse table of \(w\); the latter was conjectured by H. Eriksson and K. Eriksson in the case of type \(\widetilde C_l\) [loc. cit.]. Let (\(W,S\)) be a Coxeter system. For any \(w\in W\) and \(s\in S\), let \(\pi_s(w)\) be the minimal possible multiplicity of the factor \(s\) occurring in a reduced expression of \(w\). There is no general formula for the number \(\pi_s(w)\). Then the second application of the results is to deduce a very simple formula for \(\pi_s(w)\) in terms of the permutation form of \(w\) when (\(W,S\)) is an affine Weyl group of classical type.