Arun Ram
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Melbourne
Parkville, VIC 3010 Australia
aram@unimelb.edu.au
Last update: 27 April 2013
Combinatorics of Local Regions
Two conjectures are stated in [Ram1998-2, (1.3) and (1.11)] when W is a crystallographic reflection group. The first gives necessary and sufficient conditions for
(as defined in (2.16)) to be nonempty when
is dominant and the second determines the form of
as an interval in the weak Bruhat order when is dominant and integral. Loszoncy [Los1999] proved the second conjecture (Theorem 5.2 below).
His theorem implies the nonemptiness conjecture of [Ram1998-2] under the additional assumption that is integral. Here we review Loszoncy’s proof and prove the
nonemptiness conjecture in full generality. We give an example (Example 5.4) to show that integrality is necessary in Theorem 5.2. Finally, we provide Example 5.7,
which shows that one cannot expect analogous statements to hold when is noncrystallographic.
Let be the root system of a finite real reflection group and fix a set of positive roots
in
A set of positive roots is closed if it satisfies the condition:
The following theorem characterizes the sets which appear as inversion sets of elements of Recall that
denotes the inversion set of
see equation (2.4). This result is in [Bjo1984, Proposition 2], but is stated there without proof and we are not aware of a published proof. The following proof
was shown to us by J. Stembridge and appears in the thesis of D. Waugh [Wau1995].
Theorem 5.1.
Let be a real reflection group. A set of positive roots is equal to
for some element
if and only if is closed and
is closed.
Proof.
Let
and suppose that and
is a positive root. Then
is a negative root since and are both negative roots. So
is closed. Similarly, one shows that
is closed.
Assume that is closed and that is closed.
We will construct w such that by finding a reduced word
for This is done by induction on the size of with the induction step
being the combination of the two steps below.
Step 1: contains a simple root.
Let be a root of minimal height in and assume that
is not simple. Then
Since is not simple, and so
both and
are positive roots. Since
and both have lower height than then both must be in
But then the equation
contradicts the assumption that is closed. So is simple.
Step 2: Let be a simple root in and let
Claim: is closed and is closed.
Let and assume that
is a positive root. Then
or
The second is impossible since
is not a positive root. So and
is closed.
Let and suppose that
is a positive root. Since
and
are not in
So
Thus is closed.
An element is dominant (resp. integral) if
(resp.
for all simple roots The closure
of a set of positive roots is the smallest closed set of positive roots
containing
Theorem 5.2. Let
be a crystallographic reflection group and let be the crystallographic root system of
Let be dominant and integral, and set
Let be such that
and set
Then there exist elements
such that
where denotes the complement of in
and
denotes the interval between and in the weak Bruhat order.
Proof.
By Theorem 5.1, the element will exist if
is closed. Assume that
where
We must show that or
Since
We will decompose
into two pieces
and
via the following inductive procedure. Since
By reindexing the we can assume that Thus
or
and we may assume that
Since
is a root and is crystallographic, is also a
root. If is a negative root, then
gives the desired decomposition. If then
and so we may inductively apply this procedure to decompose
In this way we conclude that, after possible reindexing of the either
or
where and are positive roots such that
In the first case it is immediate that
In the second case
and so and
Thus, since is dominant and integral, one of
is in and the other is in
If
and the condition on implies that
Similarly, if
then Thus
or
So
is closed. Since
is closed and
is closed, Theorem 5.1 shows that there is an element
such that
The same method can be used to establish the existence of one must show that
is closed and this is accomplished by similar arguments.
By the definition of an element
is in if
Since the weak Bruhat order is the order determined by inclusions of R(w)
[Bjo1984, Proposition 3] the result is a consequence of the existence of the elements wmin and
wmax.
□
Remark 5.3. An alternative way to establish the existence of wmax in the proof of Theorem 5.2 is to use the conjugation involution
where u is the minimal length coset representative of w0Wγ
and w0 is the longest element of W. That this is a well defined involution
is proved in [Ram1998-2, (1.7)]. This involution takes wmax for
ℱ(γ,J) to wmin for
ℱ(γ,J)′.
In terms of the weak Bruhat order, the structure of the interval
ℱ(γ,J)′ is the same as
the structure of the interval ℱ(γ,J) but with all relations reversed.
Example 5.4. The integrality of γ is necessary in Theorem 5.2. Let
W=I2(4) be the dihedral group of order 8
(the Weyl group of type C2). The root system for type
C2 is determined by simple roots
α1=2ε1andα2=ε2-ε1
where {ε1,ε2} is an orthonormal
basis of 𝔥ℝ*=ℝ2. Let
c1=c2=1 be the parameters for
ℍ. If γ=(1/2)ε2
(see Figure 3), then Z(γ)={α1},P(γ)={α1+2α2},
and γ is dominant but γ(α2) is
not integral. The set J=P(γ) satisfies the condition in Theorem 5.2,
but J‾=J is not an inversion set for any
w∈W since J‾c is not closed.
The following method of reducing to the integral root subsystem of a weight is standard in the theory of highest weight modules for finite dimensional complex
semisimple Lie algebras; see [Jan1980]. This method turns out to be an efficient tool for reducing the nonemptiness conjecture of [Ram1998-2] to the statement in
Theorem 5.2.
Let R[γ]={α∈R|〈γ,α∨〉∈ℤ}.
For any α,β∈R[γ],
and so R[γ]
is a root system with Weyl group W[γ]=〈sα|α∈R[γ]〉⊆W.
If τ∈W[γ],
then the R[γ]-inversion set of τ is
R[γ](τ)={α>0|τα<0,α∈R[γ]}=R(τ)∩R[γ].
Theorem 5.5.
Let W be a crystallographic reflection group and let R be the crystallographic root system of W.
Let γ∈𝔥ℂ such that
Re(γ) is dominant and set
Then ℱ(γ,J)={w∈W|R(w)∩Z(γ),R(w)∩P(γ)=J}
is nonempty.
Proof.
Since γ is dominant and integral for the root system R[γ],
it follows from Theorem 5.2 that there is an element w in W[γ] such that
R[γ](w)∩Z(γ)=∅andR[γ](w)∩P(γ)=J,
where R[γ](w)={α∈R[γ]|α>0,wα<0}.
Usually R(w) is strictly larger than
R[γ](w) but it is still true that
R(w)∩Z(γ)=∅andR(w)∩P(γ)=J,
since all roots of P(γ) and Z(γ)
are in R[γ].
So w∈ℱ(γ,J).
□
When W is crystallographic, we can use the method of the proof of Theorem 5.5 in combination with the result of Theorem 5.2 to give a precise
description of the set ℱ(γ,J)
for all central characters γ∈𝔥ℂ. By choosing γ
appropriately in its W-orbit we may assume that
Re(γ) is dominant.
Define
W[γ]={σ∈W|R(σ)∩R[γ]=∅}.
Each w∈W has a unique expression
w=στwithσ∈W[γ],τ∈W[γ],
and
R(w)∩R[γ]=R(τ)∩R[γ]=R[γ](τ).
In this way the elements of W[γ] are coset representatives of the cosets in
W/W[γ].
Since ℱ(γ,J)=ℱ(Re(γ),J)
and γ is dominant and integral for the root system R[γ],
Theorem 5.2 has the following corollary.
Corollary 5.6.
With notations and assumptions as in Theorem 5.5
ℱ(γ,J)=ℱ[γ](γ,J)=W[γ]·[τmax,τmin],
where, ℱ[γ](γ,J)
is as in (5.3), τmax and τmin in
W[γ] are determined by
R[γ](τmax)=J‾
and R[γ](τmin)=(P(γ)\J)∪Z(γ)‾c,
where the complement is taken in the set of positive roots of R[γ].
This refined version of Theorem 5.2 is reminiscent of the reduction to real central character given in [BMo1993].
The following example shows that Theorem 5.5 does not naturally extend to noncrystallographic reflection groups. Note that such a
generalization necessarily involves modifying the closure condition on J to be
Example 5.7.
Let W=I2(n) be the dihedral group of order
2n,n even, with root system chosen as in Section 3 (so all roots are the same length). Let
γ be such that Z(γ)={β0}
and P(γ)={βn/4,βn/2,β3n/4}
(this γ is an example of γq in Table 1). Then the subset
J={βn/4,β3n/4}⊆P(γ)
satisfies the generalized closure condition above since βn/2 cannot be written as
βn/4-aβ0 for any
a∈ℝ>0. However,
ℱ(γ,J)=∅
since there are no chambers which are on the positive side of both
Hβ0 and
Hβn/2 and on the negative side of both
Hβn/4 and
Hβ3n/4.
Notes and References
This is an excerpt of a paper entitled Representations of graded Hecke algebras, written by Cathy Kriloff
(Department of Mathematics, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho 83209-8085) and Arun Ram.
Research of the first author supported in part by an NSF-AWM Mentoring Travel Grant.
Research of the second author supported in part by National Security Agency grant MDA904-01-1-0032 and EPSRC Grant GR K99015.