From Macdonald Polynomials to a Charge Statistic beyond Type A

The charge is an intricate statistic on words, due to Lascoux and Schutzenberger, which gives positive combinatorial formulas for Lusztig's q-analogue of weight multiplicities and the energy function on affine crystals, both of type A. As these concepts are defined for all Lie types, it has been a long-standing problem to express them based on a generalization of charge. I present a method for addressing this problem in classical Lie types, based on the recent Ram-Yip formula for Macdonald polynomials and the quantum Bruhat order on the corresponding Weyl group. The details of the method are carried out in type A (where we recover the classical charge) and type C (where we define a new statistic).