Left-symmetric algebras and homogeneous improper affine spheres (Q1749431): Difference between revisions

If \(\nabla \) is the standard affine connection on \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\), \(\Phi \) is a fixed \(\nabla \)-parallel volume form and \(H(F)\) is defined by \(\operatorname{det}(\text{Hess } F)=H(F) \Phi ^{\otimes 2}\), then a nondegenerate connected hypersurface \(\Sigma \) in \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\) is called an \textit{improper affine sphere} if its equiaffine normals are parallel. A smooth function \(F\) is translationally homogeneous if there is a constant vector \(E \in \mathbb R^{n+1}\) such that \(F(x+t E)=e^{\lambda t} F(x)\) for all \(t \in \mathbb R\) and \(x \in \mathbb R^{n+1}\). In Theorem 2.3 the author proves that the nonzero level sets of a smooth translationally homogeneous function \(F\) on \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\) satisfying \[ H(F)=c F^{n+1} \tag{1} \] for some constant \(c \neq 0\) are improper affine spheres. He gives and proves purely algebraic conditions sufficient for the characteristic polynomial \(P(x)\) of the left-symmetric algebra so that \(F=e^P\) solves (1) and the level sets of \(P\) are improper affine spheres. These algebras have triangularizable left-multiplication maps and the trace of their right-multiplication is a Koszul form for which right-multiplication by the dual idempotent is the projection along its kernel, which equals the derived Lie subalgebra of these left-symmetric algebras. In particular he deals with Hessian left-symmetric algebras and studies nilpotence of left-symmetric algebras.