On reciprocal characters and the quantum affine Schur-Weyl duality
We identify the dominant part of the Frenkel-Reshetikhin $q$-character with a natural invariant arising from the Langlands/Zelevinsky parameterization for affine Hecke algebras. We introduce the reciprocal character of a module over a $GL_n$-type affine Hecke algebra, defined in terms of multiplicities within parabolic restriction. The main theorem claims that the reciprocal character matches, under quantum affine Schur--Weyl duality, with the dominant $q$-character for finite-dimensional modules over quantum affine algebras. This result gives a type $A$ realization of the Nakajima expectation that the dominant monomials in the $q$-character should play the role of monomial-basis coordinates in Lusztig's framework for finite quantum groups. Indeed, under the affine Hecke categorification of $U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_\infty)^+$, we prove that the reciprocal character is the specialization at $q=1$ of the coordinate map attached to a monomial basis. As a consequence, dominant $q$-character multiplicities for simple (or standard) modules are described by transition coefficients between monomial and canonical (or PBW) bases. Our methods rely on the development of explicit tableau-counting formulas for such dominant multiplicities, or equivalently for the reciprocal characters of standard modules over affine Hecke algebras.