The degree of the discriminant of irreducible representations

Abstract

We present a formula for the degree of the discriminant of irreducible representations of a Lie group, in terms of the roots of the group and the highest weight of the representation. The proof uses equivariant cohomology techniques, namely, the theory of Thom polynomials, and a new method for their computation. We study the combinatorics of our formulas in various special cases.