Beyond the Enveloping Algebra of sl3

Abstract

The problem which motivated the writing of this paper is that of finding structure behind the decomposition of the sl3 representation spaces V* ⊗ W = Hom(V, W) for finite dimensional irreducible sl3-modules V and W. For sl2 this extends the classical Clebsch-Gordon problem. The question has been considered for sl3 in a computational way in [5]. In this paper we build a conceptual algebraic framework going beyond the enveloping algebra of sl3.For each dominant integral weight α let Vα be an irreducible representation of sl3 of highest weight α. It is well known that, for weights α, μ, λ, the multiplicity of Vλ in Hom(Vα, Vα+μ) is bounded by the multiplicity of μ in Vλ, with equality for generic α. This suggests the possibility of a single construction of highest weight vectors of weight X in Hom(Vα, Vα+μ) which is valid for all a.