We define and study cyclotomic quotients of affine Hecke algebras of type B. We establish an isomorphism between direct sums of blocks of these algebras and a generalization, for type B, of cyclotomic quiver Hecke algebras, which are a family of graded algebras closely related to algebras introduced by Varagnolo and Vasserot. Inspired by the work of Brundan and Kleshchev, we first give a family of isomorphisms for the corresponding result in type A which includes their original isomorphism. We then select a particular isomorphism from this family and use it to prove our result.

We show a precise formula, in the form of a monomial, for certain families of parabolic Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials of the symmetric group. The proof stems from results of Lapid–Mínguez on irreducibility of products in the Bernstein–Zelevinski ring. By quantizing those results into a statement on quantum groups and their canonical bases, we obtain identities of coefficients of certain transition matrices that relate Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials to their parabolic analogues. This affirms some basic cases of conjectures raised recently by Lapid.

Let $W$ be an extended affine Weyl group. We prove that the minimal length elements $w_{{\mathcal{O}}}$ of any conjugacy class ${\mathcal{O}}$ of $W$ satisfy some nice properties, generalizing results of Geck and Pfeiffer [On the irreducible characters of Hecke algebras, Adv. Math. 102 (1993), 79–94] on finite Weyl groups. We also study a special class of conjugacy classes, the straight conjugacy classes. These conjugacy classes are in a natural bijection with the Frobenius-twisted conjugacy classes of some $p$-adic group and satisfy additional interesting properties. Furthermore, we discuss some applications to the affine Hecke algebra $H$. We prove that $T_{w_{{\mathcal{O}}}}$, where ${\mathcal{O}}$ ranges over all the conjugacy classes of $W$, forms a basis of the cocenter $H/[H,H]$. We also introduce the class polynomials, which play a crucial role in the study of affine Deligne–Lusztig varieties He [Geometric and cohomological properties of affine Deligne–Lusztig varieties, Ann. of Math. (2) 179 (2014), 367–404].

This paper gives the classification of the Whittaker unitary dual for affine graded Hecke algebras of type E. By the Iwahori–Matsumoto involution, this is also equivalent to the classification of the spherical unitary dual for type E. Together with some results of Barbasch and Moy (D. Barbasch and A. Moy, Unitary spherical spectrum for p-adic classical groups, Acta Appl. Math. 44 (1996), 3–37; D. Barbasch, The spherical unitary spectrum of split classical real and p-adic groups, Preprint (2006), math/0609828) and Ciubotaru (D. Ciubotaru, The Iwahori spherical unitary dual of the split group of type F4, Represent. Theory 9 (2005), 94–137), this work completes the classification of the Whittaker Iwahori-spherical unitary dual or, equivalently, the spherical unitary dual of any split p-adic group.

We define a set of ‘cell modules’ for the extended affine Hecke algebra of type A which are parametrised by $SL_n({\open C})$-conjugacy classes of pairs (s, N), where $s\in SL_n({\open C})$ is semisimple and N is a nilpotent element of the Lie algebra which has at most two Jordan blocks and satisfies Ad(s)·N=q2 N. When q2≠−1, each of these has irreducible head, and the irreducible representations of the affine Hecke algebra so obtained are precisely those which factor through its Temperley–Lieb quotient. When q2=−1, the above remarks apply to a subset of the cell modules. Using our work on the cellular nature of those quotients, we are able to obtain complete information on the decomposition of the cell modules in all cases, even when q is a root of unity. They turn out to be multiplicity free, and the composition factors may be precisely described in terms of a partial order on the pairs (s, N). These results give explicit formulae for the dimensions of the irreducibles. Assuming our modules are identified with the ‘standard modules’ earlier defined by Bernstein–Zelevinski, Kazhdan–Lusztig and others, our results may be interpreted as the determination of certain Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials. [This has now been proved and will appear in a subsequent work of the authors.]