Affine braids, Markov traces and the category O

This paper provides a unified approach to results on representations of affine Hecke algebras, cyclotomic Hecke algebras, affine BMW algebras, cyclotomic BMW algebras, Markov traces, Jacobi-Trudi type identities, dual pairs (Zelevinsky), and link invariants (Turaev). The key observation in the genesis of this paper was that the technical tools used to obtain the results in Orellana and Suzuki, two a priori unrelated papers, are really the same. Here we develop this method and explain how to apply it to obtain results similar to those in Orellana and Suzuki in more general settings. Some specific new results which are obtained are the following: (a) a generalization of the results on Markov traces obtained by Orellana to centralizer algebras coming from quantum groups of all Lie types, (b) a generalization of the results of Suzuki to show that Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials of all finite Weyl groups occur as decomposition numbers in the representation theory of affine braid groups of type A, (c) a generalization of the functors used by Zelevinsky to representations of affine braid groups of type A, (d) a definition of the affine BMW-algebra (Birman-Murakami-Wenzl) and show that it has a representation theory analogous to that of affine Hecke algebras. In particular there are ``standard modules'' for these algebras which have composition series where multiplicites of the factors are given by Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials for Weyl groups of types A,B,and C, (e) we generalize the results of Leduc and Ram on constructing representations of centralizer algebras to affine centralizer algebras.