Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2007 / iii / Paper 4 / 5 / i / Solution

Let $h$ be the standard Cartan element of the sl2 Lie algebra, with $[h,e]=2e$ and $[h,f]=-2f$. For a finite-dimensional representation, its formal character records its weight multiplicities:The classification of finite-dimensional sl2 representations and the Weyl complete reducibility theorem give $V={⨁}_{m\ge 0}{a}_m{L}_m$, with finitely many nonzero $a_m$. Each $L_m$ has weights $m,m-2,\dots ,-m$, each of multiplicity one. ThereforeIn particular $c_j=c_{-j}$, and for $j\ge 0$ one has $c_j-c_{j+2}=a_j\ge 0$. This proves parity unimodality of an sl2 character: within each parity, the coefficients increase towards zero and decrease away from zero. For a representation whose weights have a single parity, deleting the intervening zero coefficients gives a symmetric unimodal sequence.

The parity convention is necessary for the printed assertion. If unimodality means the full coefficient sequence at every consecutive integer exponent, it is false: the standard two-dimensional representation has character $q+q^{-1}$, whose coefficients at exponents $-1,0,1$ are $1,0,1$. The statement established above is unimodality on cosets of the root lattice for ${\mathfrak{sl}}_2$, and is the version needed in part ii. Infinite-dimensional representations need not even have Laurent-polynomial characters.