On dominant $\ell$--weights and maps between Weyl modules for quantum affine $A_n$

We determine the set of dominant $\ell$--weights in the Weyl (or standard) modules for quantum affine $A_n$. We then prove that the space of homomorphisms between standard modules is at most one-dimensional and give a necessary and sufficient condition for equality to hold. We also describe the socle of the standard module and prove that the socle is simple for large $n$. Finally, we give applications of our results to mixed Weyl modules, calculating extensions in the category and identify new families of tensor subcategories of finite dimensional representations.