On the center of affine Hecke algebras of type A

We give an explicit expression for the central elements of affine Hecke algebras of type A in the Coxeter presentation, in terms of (parabolic) affine Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials. Our approach is based on a version of quantum affine Schur-Weyl duality involving the Hall algebra of a cyclic quiver, on the theory of canonical bases and on the higher-level q-deformed Fock spaces recently introduced by Uglov.