Killing form on arvau

Wikipedia / Killing form

In mathematics, the Killing form, named after Wilhelm Killing, is a symmetric bilinear form that plays a basic role in the theories of Lie groups and Lie algebras. Cartan's criteria (criterion of solvability and criterion of semisimplicity) show that Killing form has a close relationship to the semisimplicity of the Lie algebras.

History and name

The Killing form was essentially introduced into Lie algebra theory by in his thesis. In a historical survey of Lie theory, has described how the term "Killing form" first occurred in 1951 during one of his own reports for the Séminaire Bourbaki; it arose as a misnomer, since the form had previously been used by Lie theorists, without a name attached. Some other authors now employ the term "Cartan-Killing form". At the end of the 19th century, Killing had noted that the coefficients of the characteristic equation of a regular semisimple element of a Lie algebra are invariant under the adjoint group, from which it follows that the Killing form (i.e. the degree 2 coefficient) is invariant, but he did not make much use of the fact. A basic result that Cartan made use of was Cartan's criterion, which states that the Killing form is non-degenerate if and only if the Lie algebra is a direct sum of simple Lie algebras.

Definition

Consider a Lie algebra over a field . Every element defines the adjoint endomorphism (also written as with the help of the Lie bracket, as

is of finite dimension, the trace of the composition of two such endomorphisms defines a symmetric bilinear form

with values in , the Killing form.

Properties

The following properties follow as theorems from the above definition.

The Killing form is bilinear and symmetric.
The Killing form is an invariant form, as are all other forms obtained from Casimir operators. The derivation of Casimir operators vanishes; for the Killing form, this vanishing can be written as
where [ , ] is the Lie bracket.
is a complex simple Lie algebra is simple but not complex; key concept: absolutely simple Lie algebra.
The Killing form is also invariant under automorphisms , that is,
for .
The Cartan criterion states that a Lie algebra is semisimple if and only if the Killing form is non-degenerate.
The Killing form of a nilpotent Lie algebra is identically zero.
If are two ideals with zero intersection, then and are orthogonal subspaces with respect to the Killing form.
The orthogonal complement with respect to of an ideal is again an ideal.
is a direct sum of its ideals is the direct sum of the Killing forms of the individual summands.

Matrix elements

Given a basis , the matrix elements of the Killing form are given by

Here

in Einstein summation notation, where the are the structure coefficients of the Lie algebra. The index functions as column index and the index as row index in the matrix . Taking the trace amounts to putting and summing, and so we can write

The Killing form is the simplest 2-tensor

In the above indexed definition, we are careful to distinguish upper and lower indices (co- and contra-variant indices). This is because, in many cases, the Killing form can be used as a metric tensor on a manifold, in which case the distinction becomes an important one for the transformation properties of tensors. When the Lie algebra is semisimple over a zero-characteristic field, its Killing form is nondegenerate, and hence can be used as a metric tensor such that the structure constants with all upper indices are completely antisymmetric.

are (for viewed in their fundamental matrix representation):The table shows that the Dynkin index for the adjoint representation is equal to twice the dual Coxeter number.

Connection with real forms

is a semisimple Lie algebra. By Cartan's criterion, the Killing form is nondegenerate, and can be diagonalized in a suitable basis with the diagonal entries . By Sylvester's law of inertia, the number of positive entries is an invariant of the bilinear form, i.e. it does not depend on the choice of the diagonalizing basis, and is called the index. This is a number between is called compact if the Killing form is negative definite (or negative semidefinite if the Lie algebra is not semisimple). Note that this is one of two inequivalent definitions commonly used for compactness of a Lie algebra; the other states that a Lie algebra is compact if it corresponds to a compact Lie group. The definition of compactness in terms of negative definiteness of the Killing form is more restrictive, since using this definition it can be shown that under the Lie correspondence, compact Lie algebras correspond to compact semisimple Lie groups.

is a semisimple Lie algebra over the complex numbers, then there are several non-isomorphic real Lie algebras whose complexification, which are called its real forms. The real forms of a given complex semisimple Lie algebra are frequently labeled by the positive index of inertia of their Killing form.

For example, the complex special linear algebra, and the special unitary algebra. The first one is noncompact, the so-called split real form, and its Killing form has signature . The second one is the compact real form and its Killing form is negative definite, i.e. has signature of , which is compact.

Trace forms

is the index of the representation.