Abstract. We approach the problem of obtaining branching rules from the point of view of dual reductive pairs. Specifically, we obtain a stable branching rule for each of 10 classical families of symmetric pairs. In each case, the branching multiplicities are expressed in terms of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. Some of the formulas are classical and include, for example, Littlewood's restriction rule as a special case.

No abstract

An extension of the Littlewood Restriction Rule is given that covers all pertinent parameters and simplifies to the original under Littlewood's hypotheses. Two formulas are derived for the Gelfand-Kirillov dimension of any unitary highest weight representation occurring in a dual pair setting, one in terms of the dual pair index and the other in terms of the highest weight. For a fixed dual pair setting, all the irreducible highest weight representations which occur have the same Gelfand-Kirillov dimension.We define a class of unitary highest weight representations and show that each of these representations, L, has a Hilbert series H L (q) of the form:where R(q) is an explictly given multiple of the Hilbert series of a finite dimensional representation B of a real Lie algebra associated to L. Under this correspondence L → B , the two components of the Weil representation of the symplectic group correspond to the two spin representations of an orthogonal group.

From a combinatorial point of view, we consider the earth mover's distance (EMD) associated with a metric measure space. The specific case considered is deceptively simple: Let the finite set of integers [n] = {1,. .. , n} be regarded as a metric space by restricting the usual Euclidean distance on the real numbers. The EMD is defined on ordered pairs of probability distributions on [n]. We provide an easy method to compute a generating function encoding the values of EMD in its coefficients, which is related to the Segre embedding from projective algebraic geometry. As an application we use the generating function to compute the expected value of EMD in this one-dimensional case. The EMD is then used in clustering analysis for a specific data set.

We provide formulas for invariants defined on a tensor product of defining representations of unitary groups, under the action of the product group. This situation has a physical interpretation, as it is related to the quantum mechanical state space of a multi-particle system in which each particle has finitely many outcomes upon observation. Moreover, these invariant functions separate the entangled and unentangled states, and are therefore viewed as measurements of quantum entanglement.When the ranks of the unitary groups are large, we provide a graph theoretic interpretation for the dimension of the invariants of a fixed degree. We also exhibit a bijection between isomorphism classes of finite coverings of connected simple graphs and a basis for the space of invariants. The graph coverings are related to branched coverings of surfaces.