$B'$-orbits on flag varieties and symmetry breaking

Abstract

Motivated by branching problems for principal series representations of the Lie group $G = GL(n,\mathbb R)$, we consider all pairs $(G', P)$ with $G'$ being the Levy factor of a parabolic subgroup of $G$ and $P$ a parabolic subgroup of $G$ for which a Borel subgroup $B'$ of $G'$ has finitely many orbits on $G/P$. We classify all such pairs $(G',P)$ for which $B'$-orbits on the generalized flag variety $G/P$ are determined by invariant functions inspired from the Bruhat decomposition. We also describe explicitly the double coset space $B'\backslash G/P$ as well as the closed $B'$-orbits on $G/P$ whenever $B'$-orbits are computed by these invariant functions.