Classical and Signed Kazhdan-Lusztig Polynomials: Character Multiplicity Inversion by Induction

Wai Ling Yee

Published 2012-07-14Version 1

The famous Kazhdan-Lusztig Conjecture of the 1970s states that the multiplicity of an irreducible composition factor of a Verma module can be computed by evaluating Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials at 1. Thus the character of a Verma module is a linear combination of characters of irreducible highest weight modules where the coefficients in the linear combination are Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials evaluated at 1. Kazhdan-Lusztig showed that inverting and writing the character of an irreducible highest weight module as a linear combination of characters of Verma modules, the coefficients in the linear combination are also Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials evaluated at 1, up to a sign. In this paper, we show how to prove Kazhdan-Lusztig's character multiplicity inversion formula by induction using coherent continuation functors. Unitary representations may be identified by determining if characters and signature characters are the same. The signature character of a Verma module may be written as a linear combination of signature characters of irreducible highest weight modules where the coefficients in the linear combination are signed Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials evaluated at 1. An analogous argument by induction using coherent continuation functors proves an analogous multiplicity inversion formula for signature characters: the signature character of an irreducible highest weight module is a linear combination of signature characters of Verma modules where the coefficients, up to a sign, are also signed Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials evaluated at 1.