Fermionic formulas for eigenfunctions of the difference Toda Hamiltonian

Abstract

We use the Whittaker vectors and the Drinfeld Casimir element to show that eigenfunctions of the difference Toda Hamiltonian can be expressed via fermionic formulas. Motivated by the combinatorics of the fermionic formulas we use the representation theory of the quantum groups to prove a number of identities for the coefficients of the eigenfunctions.