Unitary representations of reductive Lie groups and the orbit method. (Based on notes prepared by Jorge Vargas) (Q4035155)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0754.00024.] This article gives an overview to the orbit method on reductive Lie groups. The orbit method seeks to classify the representations of a Lie group \(G\) by the orbits of the dual of the adjoint action of \(G\). As a second ingredient to the orbit \(G.\lambda\) an irreducible unitary representation \(\pi\) of the stabilizer group \(G_ \lambda\) extending the functional \(\lambda\) enters the scene, such a pair \((\lambda,\pi)\) is called an integral orbit datum. In the case of compact \(G\) this gives the well known bijection between Weyl-orbits of characters and the unitary dual of \(G\). As explained in the paper, the extension of this method to general real reductive groups is still in progress. Restricted to regular semisimple orbit data it classifies the irreducible tempered representations of regular infinitesimal character. This is due to Harish-Chandra. Only partial results are available at the moment concerning the extension to non-semisimple orbit data. After giving these, the paper ends with a number of open problems.