The crystal groupoid of a compact semisimple Lie group and its flag varieties

Abstract

We introduce the crystal groupoid of a compact semisimple Lie group $K$; it is the Deaconu-Renault groupoid of a higher-rank analogue of a subshift of finite type on an inverse limit of Kashiwara crystals. We show that its Steinberg algebra and its $C^*$-algebra realise the crystal limits of the polynomial function algebra of $K$ and its $C^*$-envelope, respectively, in the sense of Matassa and the second author. We show that the orbit space of the crystal groupoid is in bijection with the Weyl group of $K$, with topology determined by the Bruhat order on the Weyl group. We also define a crystal groupoid for flag manifolds and related Poisson homogeneous spaces, and prove the analogous structural results.