Extremal part of the PBW-filtration and E-polynomials

Given a reduced irreducible root system, the corresponding nil-DAHA is used to calculate the extremal coefficients of nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials, also called E-polynomails, in the limit t=infinity and for antidominant weights, which is an important ingredient of the new theory of nonsymmetric q-Whittaker function. These coefficients are pure q-powers and their degrees are expected to coincide in the untwisted setting with the extremal degrees of the so-called PBW-filtration in the corresponding finite-dimensional irreducible representations of the simple Lie algebra for any root systems. This is a particular case of a general conjecture in terms of the level-one Demazure modules. We prove this coincidence for all Lie algebras of classical type and for G_2, and also establish the relations of our extremal degrees to minimal q-degrees of the extremal terms of the Kostant q-partition function; they coincide with the latter only for some root systems.