The adjoint representation of a classical Lie algebra and the support of Kostant's weight multiplicity formula

DOI10.4310/JOC.2016.V7.N1.A4zbMATH Open1330.05164arXiv1401.0055WikidataQ115163756 ScholiaQ115163756MaRDI QIDQ5963387FDOQ5963387

Erik Insko, Pamela E. Harris, Lauren Kelly Williams

Publication date: 19 February 2016

Published in: Journal of Combinatorics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Even though weight multiplicity formulas, such as Kostant's formula, exist their computational use is extremely cumbersome. In fact, even in cases when the multiplicity is well understood, the number of terms considered in Kostant's formula is factorial in the rank of the Lie algebra and the value of the partition function is unknown. In this paper we address the difficult question: What are the contributing terms to the multiplicity of the zero weight in the adjoint representation of a finite dimensional Lie algebra? We describe and enumerate the cardinalities of these sets (through linear homogeneous recurrence relations with constant coefficients) for the classical Lie algebras of Type $B$, $C$, and $D$, the Type $A$ case was computed by the first author in [5]. In addition, we compute the cardinality of the set of contributing terms for non-zero weight spaces in the adjoint representation. In the Type $B$ case, the cardinality of one such non-zero-weight is enumerated by the Fibonacci numbers. We end with a computational proof of a result of Kostant regarding the exponents of the respective Lie algebra for some low rank examples and provide a section with open problems in this area.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.0055

zbMATH Keywords

combinatorial representation theoryadjoint representationKostant's weight multiplicity formula

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial aspects of representation theory (05E10)

Cited In (9)

• Multiplicity of the Adjoint Representation in Simple Quotients of the Enveloping Algebra of a Simple Lie Algebra
• Computing weight multiplicities
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• When is the \(q\)-multiplicity of a weight a power of \(q\)?
• Weight multiplicities for affine Lie algebras of type \(A_{r}^{(1)}\) and Kostka numbers
• Weight \(q\)-multiplicities for representations of the exceptional Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}_2\)
• On Kostant's weight \(q\)-multiplicity formula for \(\mathfrak{sl}_4(\mathbb{C})\)
• Kostant's partition function and magic multiplex juggling sequences
• Computing weight \(q\)-multiplicities for the representations of the simple Lie algebras

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