Canonical bases arising from quantum symmetric pairs of Kac–Moody type

For quantum symmetric pairs $(\textbf {U}, \textbf {U}^\imath )$ of Kac–Moody type, we construct $\imath$ -canonical bases for the highest weight integrable $\textbf U$ -modules and their tensor products regarded as $\textbf {U}^\imath$ -modules, as well as an $\imath$ -canonical basis for the modified form of the $\imath$ -quantum group $\textbf {U}^\imath$ . A key new ingredient is a family of explicit elements called $\imath$ -divided powers, which are shown to generate the integral form of $\dot {\textbf {U}}^\imath$ . We prove a conjecture of Balagovic–Kolb, removing a major technical assumption in the theory of quantum symmetric pairs. Even for quantum symmetric pairs of finite type, our new approach simplifies and strengthens the integrality of quasi- $K$ -matrix and the constructions of $\imath$ -canonical bases, by avoiding a case-by-case rank-one analysis and removing the strong constraints on the parameters in a previous work.

Seeking for the Maximum Symmetric Rank

We present the state-of-the-art on maximum symmetric tensor rank, for each given dimension and order. After a general discussion on the interplay between symmetric tensors, polynomials and divided powers, we introduce the technical environment and the methods that have been set up in recent times to find new lower and upper bounds.