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Restricted root systems may be nonreduced
Statement
Assume the Axiom of Choice. Let be a finite-dimensional real semisimple Lie algebra with Cartan involution , Cartan decomposition , Killing form , inner product , and a maximal abelian subspace , with restricted-root system (Restricted root and restricted root space, Restricted root space decomposition). Let be a connected semisimple Lie group with finite center and Lie algebra , let be a global Cartan involution of with , and put , a closed compact subgroup with Lie algebra (Global Cartan decomposition for a connected finite center semisimple Lie group). Write for the adjoint representation of and put the assertions below depend only on the restriction of to . Write for the restriction of to . For let be the vector with for every , and put and , so that is an inner product on with for . For let be the orthogonal reflection Call reducible if there are nonzero orthogonal subspaces with and for , and irreducible otherwise. Put and . Then:
(a) is finite, spans , and satisfies as well as for all ; moreover for every there is such that the dual action of on is . Thus is a finite abstract root system in with the reflections realised inside .
(b) Restricted-root systems need not be reduced: both a functional and its double can occur. Explicitly, for with , and , , the functional with satisfies
(c) Let be irreducible and nonreduced. Then with there is a linear isomorphism with , where for the standard orthonormal basis , and preserves all Cartan integers: for all . In particular the irreducible nonreduced restricted-root systems are exactly the systems of type : the indivisible roots that admit doubling correspond to , the actual doubled roots correspond to , and the reduced subsystem is the type- system .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The Axiom of Choice; a real semisimple with Cartan involution , Cartan decomposition , Killing form , inner product , maximal abelian , and restricted-root system .
The Axiom of Choice is The Axiom of Choice; it enters through the finite-dimensional representation theory of [L6] used for the integrality of the Cartan integers.
is finite, with , , and , and for with for all one has (Restricted root space decomposition, Restricted root and restricted root space).
is invariant and nondegenerate, is positive definite, , is negative definite on and positive definite on (Bracket relations and Killing signs in a Cartan decomposition).
and behave as follows at the level of subsets of : the definitions above give and , and will follow from the computation of step 5.2.
Rank-two facts for a reduced crystallographic root system with nonproportional roots : with the listed length-ratio alternatives; implies ; distinct simple roots satisfy ; and the irreducible rank-two systems are , and (Rank-two root-system classification). Moreover the simple roots of a positive system form a basis and every root is a signed integral combination of them (Simple roots form a signed integral basis).
If is the Dynkin diagram of an irreducible reduced crystallographic root system, then is a tree, has at most one multiple edge, and in the case of a multiple edge the underlying graph is a path with a double edge at an end, a double edge in the middle of a four-vertex path, or a two-vertex triple edge (Shape restrictions on Dynkin diagrams); a based root system is determined up to isomorphism by its Cartan matrix (The Cartan matrix determines a based root system), and the irreducible reduced crystallographic root systems are with the low-rank coincidences , (Classification of irreducible root systems). The standard systems and are reduced crystallographic root systems with their standard simple roots and Dynkin diagrams (Classical root systems in coordinates), and is the group of signed permutations of the coordinates, which acts transitively on and on (Weyl groups of B_n and D_n).
A finite-dimensional module over a copy of has the standard diagonal element acting diagonalisably with integer eigenvalues (Finite-dimensional representations of sl_2).
A real finite-dimensional Lie algebra is semisimple if and only if its complexification is (Complexification preserves semisimplicity), and the Killing form of is nondegenerate (Classical simple Lie algebras and their Killing forms, Classical complex matrix Lie algebras).
Proof
By [L2] the restriction of to is a positive definite inner product; for the vector with for all exists and is unique, and is an inner product on with for ; also ; the reflection is orthogonal, fixes pointwise and sends to ; put , so that .
Witness setup: let and with ; then is an involutive automorphism of , and lies in exactly when with , and , so that and ; write with , and ; the element lies in and is a -dimensional subspace of ; finally is semisimple, because has nondegenerate Killing form and is its real form.
spans : if satisfies for every , then for every and also because , so by [L1], i.e. because is semisimple; hence no nonzero annihilates , and spans .
Notation: is reducible if there are nonzero orthogonal subspaces with and for , and irreducible otherwise; and .
Let and choose ; then by [L2], the bracket lies in by [L1] and satisfies , hence lies in , and for every one has , so ; rescaling by a positive real number we arrange , that is , and then .
Witness computation, part 1: for with coordinates as in step 1.2, a direct computation of gives the new coordinates , , , , ; hence if and only if , and ; consequently , and is maximal abelian in , since every abelian subspace of containing is contained in .
The normalization of step 2.1 gives the bracket relations , and , so the real span of is a three-dimensional Lie subalgebra of isomorphic to with corresponding to ; complexifying, its complexification is a copy of in acting on the finite-dimensional complex vector space .
Witness computation, part 2: solving the coordinate equations of step 2.2 for eigenvectors of shows that the eigenvalues are with multiplicity , with multiplicity each, and with multiplicity each; explicitly for , the elements and of satisfy and are linearly independent, hence span the eigenspace for the functional with , and is spanned by and .
Let ; since one has , so ; moreover for and, with , and , so the exponential series gives ; hence preserves , acts as the identity on and as on , i.e. acts on by the reflection with fixed hyperplane .
Witness computation, part 3: by step 3.2 the restricted-root system of the pair of step 1.2 is with , the spaces being the two -dimensional eigenspaces and the two -dimensional eigenspaces; hence and , and this restricted-root system is not reduced, since both and occur.
Integrality: let ; by step 3.1 the copy of spanned by acts on , and is its standard diagonal element; by [L6] the operator is diagonalisable with integer eigenvalues on ; since lies in the eigenspace of for the eigenvalue , this number is an integer.
The reflection is realised in and permutes : by step 4.1 the element satisfies and acts on by , so ; and for and one has for all , so and ; hence for every .
Multiples of a restricted root: let and let , a finite nonempty set of positive reals with minimum ; by step 4.3 one has for all , so with and one gets and hence ; moreover no satisfies , since then would lie strictly between and ; therefore or , and since we have or ; hence every element of is either indivisible or twice an indivisible root, that is , and for every the only positive multiples of in are and possibly .
is a reduced crystallographic root system in : it is finite by [L1]; it spans because by step 5.2 and spans by step 1.3; it satisfies for because by step 5.1 and preserves the property , since ; it satisfies the integrality condition by step 4.3; and it is reduced because for , which is exactly the statement proved in step 5.2.
is invariant under the Weyl group : if and , then by step 5.1, and by step 6.1, so .
is irreducible if and only if is: if with and both parts nonempty, then by step 5.2, and both parts are nonempty and mutually orthogonal, so is reducible; conversely if with and both parts nonempty, then every is or with (if , , then , impossible), so with both parts nonempty and orthogonal, and is reducible.
Every root of is a -conjugate of a simple root: it suffices to treat and to induct on the height , the negative case following from ; if there is nothing to prove, so suppose , write over with integers and by [L4], and note that gives an index with , which forces because for by [L4]; with one has and would force with , hence by reducedness of and , a contradiction, so ; the root has height , so either or is a positive root of smaller height, which by induction is a -conjugate of a simple root, and since and in the respective cases, is such a conjugate too.
For and one has : indeed the pair consists of two elements of , so step 4.3 applied to it gives , which is the displayed number.
Suppose is irreducible and nonreduced, so that is irreducible by step 7.2 and by step 5.2; fix a positive system of with simple roots ; choosing and applying step 7.3 to the roots of shows that some satisfies , that is , because is -invariant by step 7.1.
The rank-one case: if is one-dimensional, then for some by step 5.2 and step 6.1, so acts transitively on ; by step 7.1 the nonempty set is -invariant, hence and by step 5.2; then the linear map sending to and to carries onto and preserves all Cartan integers, since and match the corresponding numbers computed in .
Suppose from now on that and let be as in step 8.1; if , , satisfies , then and, in the convention of [L4], one has . This integer is even by step 7.4, so and [L4] gives and ; hence every neighbour of in the Dynkin diagram is longer than and is joined to by a double edge, and since the diagram has at most one multiple edge by [L5] the vertex has degree one; applying [L5] once more, the diagram of is a path with exactly one multiple edge, which is the double edge at the end , all other edges being simple, and the double edge carries the arrow pointing to the shorter root : indeed the remaining configurations of [L5] with a multiple edge are a double edge in the middle of a four-vertex path and a two-vertex triple edge, and neither can occur here because every edge at is a double edge while has degree one.
All simple roots of other than have length : the neighbour of does by step 9.1, and every further vertex is reached along a path of simple edges, along which the length ratio is by [L4]; consequently the Cartan matrix of with respect to the base is that of the standard type- base , , as computed in [L5]: diagonal entries , entries between consecutive non-final simple roots, entry and along the double edge, and otherwise; since a based root system is determined up to isomorphism by its Cartan matrix by [L5], the linear isomorphism carrying to that base is an isomorphism of onto .
is exactly the set of short roots of : is -invariant by step 7.1, and under the isomorphism of step 10.1 the roots of correspond to with corresponding to a short root ; since is the group of signed permutations and acts transitively on by [L5], contains the whole short class; conversely no long root lies in , because for such a root , the short root satisfies and , so , contradicting step 7.4.
Conclusion of (c): by steps 10.1 and 11.1 there is a linear isomorphism of onto carrying onto and onto ; therefore carries onto ; and preserves Cartan integers: on pairs of roots of this holds by the definition of a root-system isomorphism, and for pairs involving a doubled root with one computes and , which are the corresponding Cartan integers in because correspond to short roots while correspond to the doubled roots ; combined with the rank-one case of step 8.2 this proves (c) for all .
Statements (a), (b) and (c) are now proved: finiteness, spanning and the reflection and integrality properties of in steps 1.3, 4.3 and 5.1, together with the realisation of in in step 5.1, give (a); the explicit nonreduced restricted-root system of the pair in step 4.2 gives (b); and the classification of the irreducible nonreduced case in step 12.1 completes (c). The Axiom of Choice was used only through the representation theory of [L6] in step 4.3.
Depends on
- Restricted root and restricted root space
- Restricted root space decomposition
- Bracket relations and Killing signs in a Cartan decomposition
- Reduced crystallographic Euclidean root system
- Reducible and irreducible root systems
- Rank-two root-system classification
- Simple roots form a signed integral basis
- Shape restrictions on Dynkin diagrams
- The Cartan matrix determines a based root system
- Classification of irreducible root systems
- Classical root systems in coordinates
- Weyl groups of B_n and D_n
- Finite-dimensional representations of sl_2
- Complexification preserves semisimplicity
- Classical simple Lie algebras and their Killing forms
- Classical complex matrix Lie algebras
- Global Cartan decomposition for a connected finite center semisimple Lie group
- The Axiom of Choice
Used by
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Sources
- Anthony W. Knapp, Lie Groups Beyond an Introduction, 2nd ed., Chapter VI (standard reference, not scraped)
- Anthony W. Knapp, Lie Groups Beyond an Introduction, 2nd ed., Chapter II (standard reference, not scraped)