Characteristic Classes Of Representations Of Lie Groups

Abstract

An irreducible representation of a reductive Lie algebra, when restricted to a Cartan subalgebra, decomposes into weights with multiplicity. The first part of this paper outlines a procedure to compute symmetric polynomials (e.g., power sums) of this multiset of weights, as functions of the highest weight. Next, let G be a connected reductive complex algebraic group with maximal torus T. We express the restrictions of the Chern classes of irreducible representations of G to T, as polynomial functions in the highest weight. We do the same for Stiefel-Whitney classes of orthogonal representations.