The Computational Complexity to Evaluate Representations of General Linear Groups

We describe a fast algorithm to evaluate irreducible matrix representations of complex general linear groups GLm with respect to a symmetry adapted basis (Gelfand–Tsetlin basis). This is complemented by a lower bound, which shows that our algorithm is optimal up to a factor m2 with regard to nonscalar complexity. Our algorithm can be used for the fast evaluation of special functions: for instance, we obtain an O(! log !) algorithm to evaluate all associated Legendre functions of degree !. As a further application we obtain an algorithm to evaluate immanants, which is faster than previous algorithms due to Hartmann and Barvinok.