A classification of involutive automorphisms of an affine Kac-Moody Lie algebra (Q1108362): Difference between revisions

[See also the review of the author's MIT thesis 1983 in Zbl 0596.17011.] Here the author classifies the conjugacy classes of involutions in the group Aut(\({\mathfrak g})\) of automorphisms of an affine Kac-Moody Lie algebra \({\mathfrak g}\). In the finite dimensional case, this problem was solved by E. Cartan who used it as a main tool for the classification of symmetric spaces. An important fact in this case is that given an automorphism, there exist a Borel subalgebra and a Cartan subalgebra that are stable under the automorphism. For the present case, the author says that \(\sigma\in Aut({\mathfrak g})\) is of the first or the second kind depending on whether \(\sigma\) leaves stable the conjugacy class of a Borel subalgebra. Associating a Tits system to a Kac-Moody algebra and using a result of Bruhat and Tits on the existence of a fixed point for any bounded group of isometries of a building, he proves that when \(\sigma\) is of the first kind and of finite order, there exists a \(\sigma\)-invariant pair \(\{\) \({\mathfrak h}\subset {\mathfrak b}\}\) of Borel and Cartan subalgebras \({\mathfrak b}\), \({\mathfrak h}\) of the algebra. From this, he elaborates a list of representatives of conjugacy classes of involutions of the first kind of \({\mathfrak g}\). Then, looking at the fixed point sets of the different classes of involutions, he concludes that they are not conjugate under Aut(\({\mathfrak g})\). Using a result of Peterson and Kac on the conjugacy classes of Borel subalgebras, he also gives a complete list of involutions of the second kind of \({\mathfrak g}\) but he could not check whether the list is redundant because of the difficulty of descriptions of the fixed point sets.