UW-PIMS Mathematics Colloquium: Jonathan Brundan

  • Date: 03/09/2012
  • Time: 14:30
Lecturer(s):
Jonathan Brundan
Location: 

University of Washington

Topic: 

Representations of General Linear Lie Superalgebras

Description: 

Abstract

 

The general linear Lie algebra gln(C) -- endomorphisms of an
n-dimensional complex vector space V with operation [x,y] being the
commutator xy−yx -- is the most basic example of a Lie algebra. If we
assume instead that the vector space V is equipped with a Z/2-grading,
i.e. V=V0⊕V1 is the direct sum of an m-dimensional "even" and an
n-dimensional "odd" subspace, and replace commutator with the
"supercommutator" (which takes account of parity in the most natural
way), we get the general linear Lie superalgebra glm|n(C).

The representation theory of the general linear Lie algebra is
unbelievably rich and has a long history going back to Schur and Weyl,
who computed the characters of the finite dimensional irreducible
representations via the theory of symmetric functions. There is also an
important family of (mostly infinite dimensional) irreducible highest
weight representations for which an explicit character formula was
conjectured by Kazhdan and Lusztig in 1979, and dramatically proved by
Beilinson-Bernstein and Brylinski-Kashiwara in 1980, thereby giving
birth to a subject known as "geometric representation theory."

So what happens for the general linear Lie superalgebra? Even the finite
dimensional representations are quite difficult to understand, but now
we have a pretty good picture. There is also a version of the
Kazhdan-Lusztig conjecture which has just been proved (by Cheng, Lam and
Wang). In the talk I'll try to give you the flavor of these results,
starting with the base cases gl2(C) and gl1|1(C), which illustrate the
general picture perfectly despite being trivial from a combinatorial
perspective.

Other Information: 

Location: DEN 216

 

For more information please visit UW Math Department

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