In 1979, Vogan introduced a generalised tau -invariant for characterising
primitive ideals in enveloping algebras. Via a known dictionary this translates
to an invariant of left cells in the sense of Kazhdan and Lusztig. Although it
is not a complete invariant, it is extremely useful in describing left cells.
Here, we propose a general framework for defining such invariants which also
applies to Hecke algebras with unequal parameters.Comment: 15 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1405.573