Quantum wreath products and Schur–Weyl duality I

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Abstract In this paper, the authors introduce a new notion called the quantum wreath product, which is the algebra $B \wr _Q \mathcal {H}(d)$ produced from a given algebra B, a positive integer d and a choice $Q=(R,S,\rho ,\sigma )$ of parameters. Important examples that arise from our construction include many variants of the Hecke algebras, such as the Ariki–Koike algebras, the affine Hecke algebras and their degenerate version, Wan–Wang’s wreath Hecke algebras, Rosso–Savage’s (affine) Frobenius Hecke algebras, Kleshchev–Muth’s affine zigzag algebras and the Hu algebra that quantizes the wreath product $\Sigma _m \wr \Sigma _2$ between symmetric groups. In the first part of the paper, the authors develop a structure theory for the quantum wreath products. Necessary and sufficient conditions for these algebras to afford a basis of suitable size are obtained. Furthermore, a Schur–Weyl duality is established via a splitting lemma and mild assumptions on the base algebra B. Our uniform approach encompasses many known results which were proved in a case by case manner. The second part of the paper involves the problem of constructing natural subalgebras of Hecke algebras that arise from wreath products. Moreover, a bar-invariant basis of the Hu algebra via an explicit formula for its extra generator is also described.