Branched crystals and the category \(\mathcal O\) (Q2581387)

The authors define the notion of a branched crystal, its indecomposable components and classify the indecomposable branched crystals. Also they define the tensor product of two branched crystals and show that the tensor product is both associative and commutative. Finally, they make a connection with the representation theory of \(U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)\), and show that one can associate a given module \(V\) in the BGG category \(\mathcal {O}\) of \(U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)\) a branched crystal \(B(V)\) in a purely formal but natural and unique way so that direct sums are preserved.