No label defined (Q3974076)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0722.00010.] This rich in ideas paper is a survey of some recent advances in the representation theory of infinite-dimensional groups. The paper is based in the main on works by G. Ol'shanskij and the author. The account is concentrated upon the notions of a mantle and a train. These for an infinite-dimensional group are a semigroup and a category, respectively. There exist several different definitions of these notions. So one can get different although related objects. In the paper the mantles and the trains and their representations for the Virasoro algebra are constructed, for the automorphism groups of canonical commutation and anticommutation relations (infinite-dimensional symplectic and orthogonal groups). For the latter groups the Weyl and spinor representations (introduced by F. A. Berezin) are used correspondingly. As the trains, the category ``Shtan'' (very important for conformal quantum field theory) and symplectic and orthogonal categories appear here. Further, some categories related to other classical (complex and real) groups are defined and their representations are constructed. Note that the Weyl and spinor representations play a fundamental role: representations of infinite-dimensional groups are in the habit to be passed through them. In the conclusion the author gives a sketch of the development and the structure of the representation theory of infinite-dimensional groups. He notes that the ideology of mantles and trains enables to unify representations ``of different levels''.