Approaches to resolution of Weyl modules. (Q5953151)

In the eighties, Akin and Buchsbaum worked on the problem of resolving Schur modules in terms of direct sums of tensor products of exterior powers (the so-called `fundamental representations'). Then they considered resolutions of Weyl modules whose terms are direct sums of tensor products of divided powers. The standard map used to present Schur and Weyl modules and their resolutions was noted to be ``some sort of'' polarization map. It takes a tensor product of two or more elements, diagonalizes one of them in suitable degrees, and then multiplies one of the resulting factors by another term of the tensor product. The key observation was that if one uses letter-place algebras to describe the tensor products, we can get an interpretation of these ``sort of'' polarizations as place polarizations. In this approach, the advantage is that the compositions of polarizations satisfy certain (Capelli-like) identities, and thus making easier many of the earlier difficult computations. In the setting of letter-place algebras, the authors noted that the appropriate homological tool is the bar complex (instead of the arithmetic Koszul complex). The bar complex is then suitable generalized, and these generalized bar complexes and certain bar modules will play an important role in organizing the terms that appear in the resolutions. Since bar complexes are usually associated to an action of an algebra on a module, the authors set up and study the actions arising in this general setting. They develop a section on the actions of the polarization operators on certain complexes which are called `stems'. Certain actions fail to be transitive, but they are homotopy-transitive, which leads to a study not only of the actions but also of homotopies associated with them. The algebra of polarizations is closely associated with the Heisenberg-Weyl algebra, and the authors devote a section of the article to study the relations between their polarization algebra and this algebra. Finally, the terms in the resolution are described inductively, and a proof is provided of the fact that this description is valid.