Littlewood-Richardson coefficients for Hecke algebras at roots of unity (Q750601)

The classical Littlewood-Richardson coefficients are the structure constants of the algebra of symmetric functions in the basis of Schur functions. This algebra is isomorphic to \(\oplus_ nK_ 0(CS_ n)\) with multiplication given by \([p_ 1]*[p_ 2]=[p_ 1shift_ m(p_ 2)]\), where \(p_ 1\), \(p_ 2\) are idempotents in \(CS_ m\), \(CS_ n\) and \(shift_ m\) is the homomorphism \(CS_ n\to CS_{m+n}\) which takes the transposition (i i\(+1)\) to \((i+m i+m+1).\) A similar algebra can be constructed whenever one has an analogue of the shift operation. In particular, this can be done with the braid group algebra \(CB_{\infty}\) (more precisely, with its approximately finite- dimensional representations) and with its quotients the Hecke algebras H(q). If q is not a root of unity, the structure constants of the resulting algebra turn out to be the same as the classical Littlewood- Richardson coefficients. If q is a primitive l-th root of unity, \(H_ n(q)\) is not semisimple, but one can define an approximately finite- dimensional quotient \(H_ n^{k,l}\) of \(H_ n\) for each \(0\leq k<l\). The structure constants of the algebras associated to these quotients are the coefficients in the title of the paper. The authors find a formula for these q Littlewood-Richardson coefficients (when q is a root of unity) in terms of the classical ones. It turns out to be the same as the formula for the fusion coefficients in the WZW conformal field theory. It is probably also related to tensor products of representations of the quantum group \(sl(k)_ q\).