Last update: 8 June 2014
This is a typed copy of Peter Norbert Hoefsmit's thesis Representations of Hecke Algebras of Finite Groups with BN-Pairs of Classical Type published in August, 1974.
In this chapter we give some results on the irreducible constituents of the induced representation of the Borel subgroup of a finite group with BN-pair of classical type. The following theorem is basic to the study of these representations.
Theorem (3.1.1) ([CFo1968]) Let denote the algebraic closure of Each irreducible of is the restriction to of a unique irreducible of such that Moreover every irreducible constituent of is obtained in this way. The degree of is given by where is the basis element of corresponding to and
Let be the generic Ring of a Coxeter system defined over as in (2) and let be the quotient field of the algebraic closure of It is clear from the relations (2.1.8) (see e.g. [CIK1971]), lemma 2.7) that there exists a unique homomorphism such that
Definition (3.1.3) Let be an irreducible of Set where We call the generic degree associated with
Let be an irreducible representation of Let denote the entry of Thus is a function from to The ring is a symmetric algebra with dual basis and (see e.g. [Gre1970], Lemma 5.1). Then from ([CRe1961], Lemma 62.8) and Schur's lemma, we have where is the Kronecker delta and if is the character of Now let be the generic ring of a Coxeter system of classical type and let be a finite group with BN-pair of type Let be the homomorphism defined by the index parameters (see 2.1.5). Let and let be the extension of to the ring of fractions regarded as a subring of Let be an irreducible character of The results of chapter 2 (see also [CIK1971], Proposition 7.1) show for all and the map defined by is an irreducible character of The map is a bijection between the irreducible characters of and those of
As we regard the specialized character as an irreducible character of and denote the corresponding irreducible constituent of in the sense of Theorem (3.1.1) by
Proposition (3.1.7) With the notations as above we have
Proof. | |
From ([CIK1971], lemma 5.9), and The statement now follows from (3.1.2) and (3.1.6) and the definition of |
In particular if is defined by for all and (3.1.7) becomes
We will evaluate for the irreducible character of the generic ring corresponding to a Coxeter system of classical type in the next section. We conclude this section with the following.
Let and let determines a parabolic subgroup
Definition (3.1.8) Let be an irreducible character of such that is said to be of parabolic type if for some
From the above there is a natural bijective correspondence between the irreducible of and the irreducible of In ([CIK1971], Theorem 7.2) it is shown that for all Thus to show the irreducible constituents of are of parabolic type it is enough to show it for the irreducible characters of the Weyl groups.
Proposition (3.1.10) Every irreducible character of and is of parabolic type.
Proof. | |
Let be a partition of Let denote the group of row permutations of the canonical tableau of shape Then coincides with for some the set of distinguished generators for given in (3). Order the partitions of lexicographically and let denote the character of the irreducible representation of corresponding to From ([Rob1961], pp. 40-41) Thus which is well known. For a double partition of let denote the partition of defined by Let denote the character of the outer product representation of (see (1.2.2)). From ([Rob1961], Theorem 3.13), Then by (3.1.11) But by Theorem (1.2.2) the restriction of the irreducible representation of to is the outer product representation Thus, letting denote the character of we have by (3.1.12) and Frobenius reciprocity. As is a parabolic subgroup of the are of parabolic type. The representations of are handled similarly. If remains irreducible when restricted to by ([You1929]). As is a subgroup of If the situation is only slightly more complicated. Set the distinguished generators of Then Let denote the character of From (2.3.7) where are the partitions of contained in Now in the lexicographic order so by (3.1.12), (3.1.13) and Frobenius reciprocity. Hence are of parabolic type. This completes the proof. |
Let be a double partition of and let denote the character of the representation of Set We show that the inductive construction of the representations yields an inductive formula for which will provide the means to determine the generic degree associated with
Let be as in Section 2. Take to be the the subset and let Then Let denote the matrix of From the proof of Theorem (2.2.7) we have the decomposition where the sum is taken over those which are non-zero. Let and denote the position, in the arrangement according to the last letter sequence, of the first and last tableau of shape respectively, which upon deletion of yield standard tableaux of shape Then for (3.2.2) implies and Since From ([Bou1968], p. 37), there exists a set of coset representatives of the left of such that The are the unique elements of minimal length in the left cosets We will determine these elements explicitly for our choice of and in the next section.
Definition (3.2.5) With the notation as above, let
We now prove
Theorem (3.2.6)
Proof. | |
Choose such that Let be the set of left representatives of minimal length as above. By (3.1.4) and (3.1.5), The second step follows from the fact that by the choice of the By (3.2.3) for either or not lying between and while by (3.2.4) and (3.1.4) for as is an absolutely irreducible representation of by theorem (2.2.14). Combining the above formulae with (3.2.7) gives which is the required result. |
While the above theorem provides the induction step for a variety of factorizations of no such factorization lends itself to an explicit formula for without tedious calculations. To obtain a formula for by induction using Theorem (3.2.6) requires the evaluation of for some row The most convenient choice is the first allowable row from which the last square can be deleted. Let denote the index of this row. Then in the Young diagram of shape the row is a row of the Young diagram of shape if Moreover, the standard tableaux of shape which upon deletion of yield standard tableaux of shape occur last in the ordering according to the last letter sequence. We defer the evaluation of until the next section. We close this section with a deduction which will prove valuable in the calculations to come.
Proposition (3.2.8) Let be as before and let be any element of which can be expressed as a product of distinct generators chosen from in increasing order, i.e. and For the matrix representation of a double partition of and there is at most one non-zero term in the above summation. In particular if and only if there exists a where and or such that
Proof. | |
As the are distinct, and (3.2.9) is just the definition of matrix multiplication. Furthermore the second statement in the proposition follows immediately from the first since by definition (2.2.6) and theorem (2.2.7), a matrix entry for if and only if or while if and only if Thus a product of matrix entries of the form is non-zero if and only if there exists a with or such that Hence to complete the proof of the proposition we must show there is at most one non-zero term in the summation (3.2.9). We do this by induction on It is certainly true for Assume true for By the rules of matrix multiplication, By the induction hypothesis it is enough to show at most one term in (3.2.10) is non-zero. Consider the position of the letters and in (i) If they belong either to the same row or column of the tableau of shape or the tableau of shape of if and only if Thus and the proposition is proved for this case. (ii) If the letters and do not belong to the same row or column of either the tableau or the tableau of set Then if and only if or and Suppose By the inductive hypothesis and the first part of the proposition, there exists a expressible as a product of distinct generators chosen from the set such that As the letter is left fixed under the action of on i.e. occupies the same position in the standard tableaux and Therefore by the choice of the letter occupies different positions in the standard tableaux and But then there cannot exist a expressible as a product of generators taken from such that i.e. Thus where or depending on the position of the letter in This completes the proof. |
The above proposition is a distinctive property of the shape of the matrices in that it clearly depends only on the position of the zero entries. Furthermore if is as in the statement of the proposition, the proposition is clearly valid for as well. Finally, for the diagonal entries the proposition is valid for any expressible as a product of distinct generators, not necessarily an increasing (or decreasing) product (see [Rut1948], pp. 43-44).
Our aim in this section is an expression for in terms of the polynomials and Throughout, will denote a double partition of with the partition having parts and the partition having parts As before denotes the non-zero double partition of obtained from by deletion of a square from the end of row of the Young diagram i.e. the first allowable row.
We first determine explicitly the elements of minimal length in the left of and defined as in the previous section. We introduce some more notation. For any set of consecutive integers set so that For ease of notation we also define Furthermore, set Thus is the sign change of
Lemma (3.3.1) The set is the unique set of elements of minimal length in the left of
Proof. | |
acts on a fixed orthonormal basis of as all permutations and sign changes. For the given choice of the set of fundamental roots of is and the set of positive roots is see ([Bou1968]). For an element is the cycle working from right to left. Hence sends the positive roots to the negative roots By the choice of these roots remain negative under the action of Thus for all as equals the number of positive roots sent to negative roots under (see [Bou1968] or [Ste1967], appendix). Therefore is of minimal length in the left A similar argument shows for and for all As for any the elements of must belong to distinct cosets. As and must be a set of coset representatives for the left of This completes the proof. |
Let and in As the expression for and as a product of generators from is reduced In order to state the next proposition concerning the matrices corresponding to the sign change of we need some notations. Let denote the axial distance from to in the standard tableau Let and define for all indices
Proposition (3.3.3) The matrix is a diagonal matrix with the entry equal to where if the letter appears in the tableau of and if appears in the tableau of
Proof. | |
The proof is by induction on For the statement of the proposition is just the definition of Now assume is diagonal. By (3.3.2) Write as the direct sum of invariant subspaces, where has basis if and has basis if the letters and appear either in the same row or column of the same tableau. With this ordering of the basis, has the corresponding block form Thus the usual case by case argument on the configuration of the letters and will suffice. 1. and in the same row or column of the same If and are in the same row, Therefore As by theorem (2.2.7) If and are in the same column, Therefore As by theorem (2.2.7) 2. and in distinct rows and columns of Set and take The deletion of all letters in and yield the same tableaux of letters. Therefore Let denote the configuration of the letters and in with the respective axial distances. With this notation we have, Therefore if and belong to the same tableau of and by theorem (2.2.7) and the induction hypothesis. Direct computation verifies the relation Therefore If and belong to distinct tableaux of by theorem (2.2.7). As we have taken with respect to the last letter sequence, appears in the tableau corresponding to of Thus by the induction hypothesis Direct computation verifies the relation Therefore This completes the proof of the proposition. |
We use this proposition to affect a reduction of Pairing the representatives and of (lemma (3.3.1)) we have as is diagonal by proposition (3.3.3).
Furthermore for letters and both appearing in the same row of the canonical tableau of shape (see section 1), is a row permutation of the canonical tableau. As any row permutation can be written as a product of such transpositions and by theorem (2.2.7), a row permutation of Let denote the last letter in the row of the canonical tableau i.e. Set Combining (3.3.5) and (3.3.6) with the definitions of and and using the explicit coset representatives given by lemma (3.3.1) we have Set Then
Proposition (3.3.9) For denote by For denote by where Then
Proof. | |
First let The axial distance from to is while for and in the same row of the axial distance from to is Therefore Also where and Therefore for Furthermore and for by (3.3.6), as we defined Thus (3.3.7) implies We now turn to the second part of the proposition. Observe first that the axial distance from to in the canonical tableau is by definition (1.1.6) the axial distance from the last square in the diagram to the first square in the first row of Therefore the path traversed from the letter to the letter is a closed path in terms of axial distance. As a result For set Then Also where and Therefore The argument used in the first part of the proposition can now be used to give This completes the proof. |
We now start the evaluation of the sum in the expression for given by (3.3.8).
Proposition (3.3.10) Let be as above. Then
(i) | for and for all |
(ii) | for all while where the canonical tableau of shape and |
(iii) | for and |
(iv) | for |
Proof. | |
(i) and (ii). For the letter occupies the last square in row by definition of Suppose By proposition (3.2.8) there exists a such that expressible as a product of distinct generators chosen from It follows that fixes all letters in Hence if the letter occupies the same position in the tableaux and i.e. the last square in row This is impossible. Therefore for which proves (i). On the other hand, if implies since the letter must be moved under the action of Therefore is in the last square of row in Similarly, as does not occur in the expression of as a product of distinguished generators, because the letter must be moved under the action of Therefore is in the last square of row in Continuation of this argument allows us to conclude and where This proves (ii). (iii) and (iv). Let denote a standard tableau obtained from by any rearrangement of the letters for This amounts to a rearrangement of the above letters among the first rows of Because the first rows, are of equal length, any such arrangement of in the first rows must have in the last box of row Thus the position of the letters is the same in and for any whose reduced expression as a product of elements from is made up entirely of the generators It follows that for and Therefore by the above argument and the ordering of the last letter sequence. For the same reason This proves (iii) and (iv). |
Using this proposition and proposition (3.2.8) it is straight forward from (3.3.8) that can be written as where Consider a part of the Young digram of shape consisting of the last box in the row and the entire row, Let be a standard tableau with letters distributed in increasing order in this part. Set Then is a row permutation of for or as the letters and have either not been moved from row or have been returned to row Hence for and or by theorem (2.2.4). Therefore by proposition (3.2.8). Label these three terms and respectively. As the entries of depend only on the position of the letters and in a standard tableau, the above computation is independent of the letter and depends only on the rows and Hence set We now rewrite (3.3.11) as follows.
Let be such that Then where the are defined as in (ii) of proposition (3.3.10). The proof of (3.3.10 (ii)) shows the letters occur in the last square of row and in the row of in increasing order, i.e. in a configuration as described above. Hence (3.3.10 (ii)) and proposition (3.2.8) show Similarly, for the letters appear in the last square of row and in the row of Noting that for rows and of equal length and both belonging to the same tableau of the computation (3.3.12) shows for Substitution of (3.3.14) and (3.3.15) into (3.3.11) now gives
Proposition (3.3.17) Let be the axial distance from the first square in the row to the last square in the row and assume row is a row of the tableau and row is a row of the tableau of Let be the length of the row. Then
(i) | |
(ii) |
Proof. | |
We use the notations of (3.3.13). (i) Because the letter appears in the last box in row and in the first box of row the axial distance from to in is and the axial distance from to in is Therefore by theorem (2.2.4). Thus (3.3.11) implies As we have the required result. (ii) We have by theorem (2.2.7) and as is a row permutation of for for by theorem (2.2.4). Hence (3.3.11) implies Furthermore, using (i) and (3.3.11) An easy induction argument, using the fact that shows Therefore Finally, the above computations give As we have the required result. |
Corollary (3.3.18) Let and be rows belonging to the same tableau of With the same notations as in proposition (3.3.17) we have
(i) | |
(ii) |
Proof. | |
If the rows and belong to the same tableau of the matrices are replaced by the matrices in proposition (3.3.17) by theorem (2.2.7). The matrices are obtained from by setting whence the first statement. For the second statement we have and |
Recall from (1) that denotes the partition conjugate to the partition
Definition (3.4.1) Let be a double partition with corresponding ordered pair of Young diagrams For the square of set where for For the square of set where for We call [resp. the hook length of the square of [resp. We call [resp. the split hook length of the square of [resp.
From (1.1.1), is the length of the of As the last square in the row of has coordinates while the last square in the column of has coordinates (1.1.5) shows equals the axial distance from the to the plus one in has the same interpretation for the diagram The split hook lengths have a corresponding interpretation. Namely, is the axial distance from the last square in the column of the to last square in the row of the plus one. Similarly equals the axial distance from the end of the column of to the end of the row of plus one.
Proposition (3.4.2)
(i) | For the double partition where Furthermore |
(ii) | For the double partition where is defined as in (i) the partition replacing the partition Furthermore |
(iii) | For the double partition let be the row of such that the column of ends in row if If set Then where It is understood that the last product in the definition of is taken to be equal to if |
Proof. | |
We will show the expression for given by (3.3.16) has the desired form for each of the cases mentioned. Direct computations are all that is required. (i) For the double partition the row is a row of and for Then by Proposition (3.3.9) and (3.3.18) Let denote the axial distance from the first square in row to the last square in row Then and using Corollary (3.3.18) Set for and rewrite the above as where the second product is taken equal to for all such that If equals the number of columns of which end in row while if no column ends in row Then for such that we have by (3.4.1) and (1.1.5) Thus Furthermore, by the choice of the row and so that The above computations show Finally, so that (3.4.3) - (3.4.5) combine to give the desired expression for As the second partition is the empty partition and so that the expression for given in the statement of (i) is just a telescopic product. (ii) The proof of (ii) is entirely similar to (i) and will be omitted. Simply replace with and note that by Proposition (3.3.9) must be replaced with in (3.4.3). Also so that (iii) In this case the row is a row of Thus employing (3.3.16) It suffices to show Let denote the axial distance from the first box in the row of to the last box in row of Then and as in (i) Let for and let be as in the statement of the theorem. Rewrite the above as Label the two bracketed expressions in (3.4.7) and respectively. By (3.4.1) and (1.1.5) and Therefore As and as for computations identical to those employed in (i) show The above expressions for and and (3.4.7) show (3.4.6) as required. This completes the proof of (iii) and the proposition. |
We can now obtain an elegant formula for For the double partition set
Theorem (3.4.9) For the irreducible character of a double partition of
Proof. | |
By induction on The statement of the theorem can readily be checked for the representations of given by Theorem (2.2.7). Let The Young diagram is obtained from the Young diagram by deleting the last square from row Thus the hook lengths of the squares of differ from the hook lengths of the squares of only for squares in the row and the or column depending on whether the row is a row of the diagram or the diagram of Indeed, the hook lengths of these squares of are one less than the corresponding squares of Similarly the split hook lengths of the squares of differ from the split hook lengths of the squares of only in the row and, if is a row of and in the column of Again the split hook lengths of these squares of are one less than the corresponding squares of Thus, from the computations of Proposition (3.4.2) we have that is of the form where or depending on whether the row is a row of or and where and run over the appropriate squares of mentioned above, for which the hook lengths and the split hook lengths differ from those of As by Theorem (3.2.6), this completes the induction and the proof of the theorem. |
We can now give an explicit expression for the generic degree (3.1.3), of the irreducible character of Let be the Poincaré polynomial of From ([Mac1972]),
Corollary (3.4.11) For the irreducible character of
Proof. | |
This follows from the definition of (3.1.3), (3.4.10) and (3.4.9). |
The generic degrees of the representations of and are readily obtained from Theorem (3.4.9) as well. In particular,
Corollary (3.4.12) Let be the homomorphism defined by Let be a partition of and let and be the irreducible characters of and corresponding to and Let be the extension of to the ring of fractions, Then and
Proof. | |
For define to be the number of times occurs in a reduced expression for in and set Then We first show Let denote the matrix of with respect to the basis of By (2.2.6) and thus commutes with Hence for where From (2.2.6), considered as a subring of Thus we have shown (3.4.13). The rest of the proof is now clear. As we have Similarly and the statement of the corollary follows. |
Thus by the above corollary and Theorem (\ref{l349}) we have, for a partition of where
Corollary (3.4.15) Let be the homomorphism defined by Let be a double partition of with and let and be the irreducible characters of and corresponding to Then where is the extension of to the ring of fractions
Proof. | |
From Theorem (2.3.9), is the restriction to of the irreducible character of where Thus by the definition of generic degree, to prove the corollary it is sufficient to prove for as in the statement of the corollary. For any and corresponding basis element we have as Thus, using the orthogonality relations (3.1.4) and the coset decomposition we have where is the matrix of with respect to the last letter sequence arrangement of the basis of Then is a diagonal matrix with entries by (2.3.9) so Then (3.4.17) becomes as the restriction of to is an absolutely irreducible representation of This proves (3.4.16) and completes the proof. |
We conclude with an example. We calculate the generic degree of the reflection representation of the generic algebra of classical type, a computation also given in ([CIK1971]) (as a polynomial in one variable). The double partition yields the reflection representation of We have Thus Setting in the above we have by (3.4.15) the generic degree of the reflection representation of
The partition of yields the reflection representation of The generic degree of the representation of corresponding to the double partition is Setting in the above we have by (3.4.12) the generic degree of the reflection representation of
Finally we remark that from (3.1.7) the above corollaries give the degrees of the irreducible constituents of for a finite group with BN-pair with Coxeter system of classical type by substitution of the index parameters in the formula for the generic degree. In particular, these computations apply to the families of Chevalley groups The degrees of these characters for the families of type were already known (see [Ste1951]).