Crystal bases, Hecke algebras and equivalences of categories

Catharina Stroppel (University of Bonn)
Monday September 22nd, 2008

The classical Schur-Weyl duality relates modules for the general linear Lie algebra with modules over the symmetric group. I first explain a higher level version of this where cyclotomic versions of degenerate Hecke algebras occur. Afterwords I will indicate how this picture can be categorified. The combinatorics of crystal graphs plays an important role here. Finally I want to illustrate in two examples how this setup can be used to derive equivalences of categories where the aforementioned Hecke algebras play the key role.