The primitive spectrum for gl(m|n)

Abstract

We study inclusions between primitive ideals in the universal enveloping algebra of general linear superalgebras. For classical Lie superalgebras, any primitive ideal is the annihilator of a simple highest weight module. It therefore suffices to study the quasi-order on highest weights determined by the relation of inclusion between primitive ideals. For the specific case of reductive Lie algebras, this quasi-order is essentially the left Kazhdan-Lusztig quasi-order. For Lie superalgebras, the classification is unknown in general, safe from some low dimensional specific cases. We derive an alternative definition of the left Kazhdan-Lusztig quasi-order which extends to classical Lie superalgebras. We show that a relation in this preorder implies an inclusion between primitive ideals. For gl(m|n) the new quasi-order is defined explicitly in terms of Brundan's Kazhdan-Lusztig theory. We prove that the quasi-order induces an actual partial order on the set of primitive ideals. We conjecture that this is the inclusion order. By the above paragraph one direction of this conjecture is true. We prove several consistency results concerning the conjecture and prove it for singly atypical and typical blocks of gl(m|n) and in general for gl(2|2). An important tool is a new translation principle for primitive ideals, based on the crystal structure for category O. Finally we focus on an interesting explicit example; the poset of primitive ideals contained in the augmentation ideal for gl(m|1).