Down–Up Algebras

The algebra generated by the down and up operators on a differential or uniform partially ordered set (poset) encodes essential enumerative and structural properties of the poset. Motivated by the algebras generated by the down and up operators on posets, we introduce here a family of infinite-dimensional associative algebras called down–up algebras. We show that down–up algebras exhibit many of the important features of the universal enveloping algebraU(sl2) of the Lie algebra sl2including a Poincaré–Birkhoff—Witt type basis and a well-behaved representation theory. We investigate the structure and representations of down–up algebras and focus especially on Verma modules, highest weight representations, and category O modules for them. We calculate the exact expressions for all the weights, since that information has proven to be particularly useful in determining structural results about posets.