On the asymptotic behavior of the $q$-analog of Kostant's partition function

Abstract

Kostant's partition function counts the number of distinct ways to express a weight of a classical Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ as a sum of positive roots of $\mathfrak{g}$. We refer to each of these expressions as decompositions of a weight. Our main result considers an infinite family of weights, irrespective of Lie type, for which we establish a closed formula for the $q$-analog of Kostant's partition function and then prove that the (normalized) distribution of the number of positive roots in the decomposition of any of these weights converges to a Gaussian distribution as the rank of the Lie algebra goes to infinity. We also extend these results to the highest root of the classical Lie algebras and we end our analysis with some directions for future research.