Symplectic branching laws and Hermitian symmetric spaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates the restriction of certain irreducible representations of complex simple Lie groups to maximal compact subgroups, describing their geometric and combinatorial structures through moment polytopes and Okounkov bodies.

Contribution

It explicitly characterizes moment polytopes, decompositions of representation spaces, and constructs a finitely generated Okounkov body for Hermitian symmetric spaces.

Findings

Explicit description of moment polytopes for the spaces

Decomposition formulas for restricted representations

Construction of a finitely generated Okounkov body

Abstract

Let $G$ be a complex simple Lie group, and let $U \subseteq G$ be a maximal compact subgroup. Assume that $G$ admits a homogenous space $X=G/Q=U/K$ which is a compact Hermitian symmetric space. Let $\mathscr{L} \rightarrow X$ be the ample line bundle which generates the Picard group of $X$. In this paper we study the restrictions to $K$ of the family $(H^0(X, \mathscr{L}^k))_{k \in \N}$ of irreducible $G$-representations. We describe explicitly the moment polytopes for the moment maps $X \rightarrow \fk^*$ associated to positive integer multiples of the Kostant-Kirillov symplectic form on $X$, and we use these, together with an explicit characterization of the closed $K^\C$-orbits on $X$, to find the decompositions of the spaces $H^0(X,\mathscr{L}^k)$. We also construct a natural Okounkov body for $\mathscr{L}$ and the $K$-action, and identify it with the smallest of the moment polytopes above. In particular, the Okounkov body is a convex polytope. In fact, we even prove the stronger property that the semigroup defining the Okounkov body is finitely generated.