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

Abstract

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.