Multivariate Jacobi polynomials and the Selberg integral (Q366091)

The representation theory of a group typically consists of two parts: the identification of ``irreducible'' (the exact meaning might differ) representations and the decomposition of natural representations into irreducibles. The latter is known as harmonic analysis and it is the topic of the present article. The groups in question are infinite-dimensional ``big'' groups, such as the infinite-dimensional orthogonal group, which is an inductive limit of classical orthogonal groups in growing dimensions. For such groups even the notion of representation or its character needs a refinement. The present article uses an identification of characters of representations with certain ``coherent'' systems of probability measures on discrete objects known as branching graphs -- this approach originates from a series of articles of Vershik and Kerov in 70s--80s on asymptotic representation theory for infinite symmetric and unitary groups. One advantage of this approach is that it eliminates the group itself from the consideration and as a consequence it allows many highly non-trivial generalizations. On the other hand, when there is no group, it becomes much harder to define a natural representation to decompose. The construction of such ``representations'' (in the language of branching graphs) is the main result of the article. The underlying branching graph describes the branching rules for multivariate Jacobi polynomials, whose particular cases are characters of orthogonal and unitary symplectic groups, and spherical functions on complex Grassmanians.