Seminormal Representations of Weyl Groups and Iwahori-Hecke Algebras

The purpose of this paper is to describe a general procedurefor computing analogues of Young's seminormal representationsof the symmetric groups. The method is to generalize the Jucys-Murphyelements in the group algebras of the symmetric groups to arbitraryWeyl groups and Iwahori-Hecke algebras. The combinatorics ofthese elements allows one to compute irreducible representationsexplicitly and often very easily. In this paper we do thesecomputations for Weyl groups and Iwahori-Hecke algebras of typesA_n, B_n, D_n, G₂. Although these computations are in reach fortypes F₄, E₆ and E₇, we shall postpone this to another work.1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: primary 20F55, 20C15;secondary 20C30, 20G05.