Idempotents of the Hecke algebra become Schur functions in the skein of the annulus
Abstract
Description
The Hecke algebra H_n contains well known idempotents E_λ which are indexed by Young diagrams with n cells. They were originally described by Gyoja. A skein theoretical description of E_λ was given by Aiston and Morton. The closure of E_λ becomes an element Q_λ of the skein of the annulus. In this skein, they are known to obey the same multiplication rule as the symmetric Schur functions s_λ. But previous proofs of this fact used results about quantum groups which were far beyond the scope of skein theory. Our elementary proof uses only skein theory and basic algebra.
17 pages, 11 figures
17 pages, 11 figures