Elementary invariants for centralizers of nilpotent matrices

We construct an explicit set of algebraically independent generators for the center of the universal enveloping algebra of the centralizer of a nilpotent matrix in the Lie algebra gl_N(C). In particular, this gives a new proof of the freeness of the center, a result first proved by Panyushev, Premet and Yakimova (math.RT/0610049).