Affine Brauer category and parabolic category $${\mathcal {O}}$$ O in types B, C, D

Abstract

A strict monoidal category referred to as affine Brauer category $$\mathcal {AB}$$ is introduced over a commutative ring $$\kappa $$ containing multiplicative identity 1 and invertible element 2. We prove that morphism spaces in $$\mathcal {AB}$$ are free over $$\kappa $$ . The cyclotomic (or level k) Brauer category $$\mathcal {CB}^f(\omega )$$ is a quotient category of $$\mathcal {AB}$$ . We prove that any morphism space in $$\mathcal {CB}^f(\omega )$$ is free over $$\kappa $$ with maximal rank if and only if the $${\mathbf {u}}$$ -admissible condition holds in the sense of (1.32). Affine Nazarov–Wenzl algebras (Nazarov in J Algebra 182(3):664–693, 1996) and cyclotomic Nazarov–Wenzl algebras (Ariki et al. in Nagoya Math J 182:47–134, 2006) will be realized as certain endomorphism algebras in $$\mathcal {AB}$$ and $$\mathcal {CB}^f(\omega )$$ , respectively. We will establish higher Schur–Weyl duality between cyclotomic Nazarov–Wenzl algebras and parabolic BGG categories $${\mathcal {O}}$$ associated to symplectic and orthogonal Lie algebras over the complex field $$\mathbb C$$ . This enables us to use standard arguments in (Anderson et al. in Pac J Math 292(1):21–59, 2018; Rui and Song in Math Zeit 280(3–4):669–689, 2015; Rui and Song in J Algebra 444:246–271, 2015), to compute decomposition matrices of cyclotomic Nazarov–Wenzl algebras. The level two case was considered by Ehrig and Stroppel in (Adv. Math. 331:58–142, 2018).