THE BGG RESOLUTION AND THE WEYL CHARACTER FORMULA Fan Zhou Summer 2020
[email protected] In this expository paper we will give1 the classical proof of the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand (BGG) resolution, following the original paper of BGG, and use it to prove the celebrated Weyl character formula (in some sense the BGG resolution is a categorification of the Weyl character formula). I have tried my best to flesh out details which BGG omitted in their original paper, as well as organize the proof and the flow of logic in a manner which I find most motivated and easily understood. Structurally we will tend to assume facts and prove goals, proving the facts later, i.e., logically this exposition should be read backwards; for example we will begin by proving Weyl assuming BGG. We do this for the sake of clarity and motivation. More specifically, we will prove BGG in this order: we will first show how Three Lemmas imply BGG; then we will show how Weak BGG2 implies Three Lemmas; then we will prove Weak BGG. Along the way we will assume some theorems not to be proven in this exposition; these facts are enumerated in Section 1. Some notes about labelling: we will label theorems by their names when appropriate, and we will label statements from BGG by just their number, e.g. writing [10.5] rather than [BGG10.5]. When we need to refer to facts from e.g. Kirillov or Humphreys3, we will for example say [K8.27] or [H4.2]. Contents 1. A Short Introduction2 2.