Primitive Idempotents of Schur Rings

In this paper, we explore the nature of central idempotents of Schur rings over finite groups. We introduce the concept of a lattice Schur ring and explore properties of these kinds of Schur rings. In particular, the primitive, central idempotents of lattice Schur rings are completely determined. For a general Schur ring $S$, $S$ contains a maximal lattice Schur ring, whose central, primitive idempotents form a system of pairwise orthogonal, central idempotents in $S$. We show that if $S$ is a Schur ring with rational coefficients over a cyclic group, then these idempotents are always primitive and are spanned by the normal subgroups contained in $S$. Furthermore, a Wedderburn decomposition of Schur rings over cyclic groups is given. Some examples of Schur rings over non-cyclic groups will also be explored

Discrete series characters for affine Hecke algebras and their formal degrees

We introduce the generic central character of an irreducible discrete series representation of an affine Hecke algebra. Using this invariant we give a new classification of the irreducible discrete series characters for all abstract affine Hecke algebras (except for the types E) with arbitrary positive parameters and we prove an explicit product formula for their formal degrees (in all cases).Comment: 68 pages, 5 figures. In the second version an appendix was adde

M\"obius Functions and Semigroup Representation Theory II: Character formulas and multiplicities

We generalize the character formulas for multiplicities of irreducible constituents from group theory to semigroup theory using Rota's theory of M\"obius inversion. The technique works for a large class of semigroups including: inverse semigroups, semigroups with commuting idempotents, idempotent semigroups and semigroups with basic algebras. Using these tools we are able to give a complete description of the spectra of random walks on finite semigroups admitting a faithful representation by upper triangular matrices over the complex numbers. These include the random walks on chambers of hyperplane arrangements studied by Bidigare, Hanlon, Rockmere, Brown and Diaconis. Applications are also given to decomposing tensor powers and exterior products of rook matrix representations of inverse semigroups, generalizing and simplifying earlier results of Solomon for the rook monoid.Comment: Some minor typos corrected and references update