Chromatic characters and root multiplicities for Borcherds--Kac--Moody algebras

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to obtain explicit formulas for the root multiplicities of a class of finite-rank symmetrizable Borcherds-Kac-Moody algebras g(A) whose real part is of type A. The Dynkin diagram of each such algebra is obtained from the disjoint union of a Dynkin diagram of type A and a finite simple graph G_im, whose vertices correspond to imaginary simple roots, by choosing one vertex in each and joining the chosen vertices by a single edge of multiplicity c>0. More generally, we consider the same construction with the type A diagram replaced by the Dynkin diagram of an arbitrary finite-rank symmetrizable Kac-Moody algebra g_re. The resulting symmetrizable Borcherds-Kac-Moody algebra g(A) has real part g_re and imaginary part represented by G_im. Our starting point is a graph-theoretic description of the quotient of the denominator products of g(A) and g_re. This quotient is a multivariate independence polynomial of G_im, with the variable corresponding to the attachment vertex weighted by normalized highest-weight characters of g_re. We prove that the coefficients of powers of this quotient factor into a generalized chromatic polynomial and a tensor-power weight multiplicity. Using this, we obtain explicit formulas for all root multiplicities with nonzero imaginary component in terms of generalized chromatic polynomials of G_im and weight multiplicities in tensor products of highest-weight modules of g_re. When G_im is chordal, these formulas specialize to finite divisor sums involving products of binomial coefficients; paths and complete graphs provide particular examples. In particular, we obtain explicit formulas for the root multiplicities of g(A) when its real part g_re is of type A.