# My Research

The main part of my research is in the intersection of combinatorics and representation theory. The motivations for the problems I am inerested in usually come from mathematical physics, more specifically with integrable systems and (Drinfel'd–Jimbo) quantum groups.

My focus is in crystals, which is a combinatorial realization of a special basis for a quantum group representation. Crystals encode the representation through certain edge-colored weighted directed graphs known as crystal graphs. They also translate many of the algebraic properties of the representations into combinatorial rules such as tensor products, dualities, and restrictions. This can also be used to give representation theoretic interpretations of more classical combinatorial maps. For instance, in type $$A_n$$, crystals are given by semistandard tableaux and maps such as evacuation, promotion, (co)plactic operations have natural interpretations using crystals.

For more information on crystals (in particular, how you can use them in SageMath), see the SageMath thematic tutorial on Lie methods and related combinatorics. A good book for crystals is Crystal bases: Representations and Combinatorics by Danial Bump and Anne Schilling.

One important class of crystals are certain finite crystals for affine type called Kirillov–Reshetikhin crystals, which are the crystal bases of Kirillov–Reshetikhin modules. These are no longer highest weight crystals, and so present unique challenges outside of the general theory. Despite this, they are known to be connected through their character theory with (nonsymmetric) Macdonald polynomials specialized at $$t = 0$$, Q-systems, and T-systems. They are also related to Demazure subcrystals of affine highest weight crystals.

One combinatorial model that I have been working on is given by rigged configurations. Rigged configurations come from mathematical physics, where they were originally used to index solutions to the Bethe ansatz to Heisenberg spin chains. The $$X=M$$ conjecture of Hatayama et al. says there exists a bijection between rigged configurations and classically highest weight elements in a tensor product of KR crystals. I have been working on the program to prove the $$X=M$$ conjecture by constructing a particular recursive bijection $$\Phi$$. Masato Okado, Anne Schilling, and I have shown this in all nonexceptional affine types, and I am currently working on proving such a bijection in the exceptional affine types. The bijection $$\Phi$$ can also be considered as a linearization of the dynamics of solution cellular automata, a generalization of the Takahashi–Satsuma box-ball system, which have natural interpretations using rigged configurations.

Other things I am working on or interested in: