Eric Rains (University of California, Davis)

Friday 22nd September, 12.05-12.55pm, Carslaw 373

New deformations of Coxeter groups

Associated to every Coxeter group is a family of Hecke algebras, which deform the corresponding group algebra. In light of the significance of Hecke algebras (especially in the structure of algebraic groups over finite and p-adic fields), it is natural to ask whether these are the only nice deformations that exist. I'll describe some work with Etingof on deformations of certain index 2 subgroups of Coxeter groups that as special cases include generalizations of Hecke algebras.