An observation on highest weight crystals (Q2459977)

Let B be a highest weight crystal of type A. Suppose a node in B has a single parent and a single grandparent. The author shows that there is a unique walk from the highest weight node to it. While this was known in the context of certain representation-theoretic behavior of the affine Hecke algebra of type A, the author goes on to get similar results for highest weight crystals of certain other types. The result for types \(A_n, (A_n)^{(1)}, B_n, (C_n)^{(1)}, (A_{(2n)})^{(2)}, (D_{(n+1)})^{(2)}\), are analogous to type \(A_n\), i.e., a unique walk from the highest weight node to the given node. For type \(D_n\), there may be two such walks. For types \((D_n)^{(1)}, (B_n)^{(1)}, (A_{(2n-1)})^{(2)}\), there may be an infinite number of such walks. In all cases, the possible walks are explicitly described. The type A result was motivated by the classical result that at characteristic zero, an irreducible \(S_n\)-module for the symmetric group \(S_n\) remains irreducible when restricted to \(S_{(n-k)}\). This is usually proved by the branching rule. The author gives a proof using representations of the affine Hecke algebra, which is valid in any characteristic. Its translation into the language of crystals is the above result for type A.