On the Harish-Chandra homomorphism for infinite-dimensional Lie algebras (Q797669)

It is well known that the Harish-Chandra homomorphism establishes an isomorphism from the centre of the universal envelope \(U({\mathfrak g})\) of a finite dimensional complex semi-simple Lie algebra \({\mathfrak g}\) to the algebra \(U({\mathfrak h})^ W\) of W-invariants in \(U({\mathfrak h})\), \({\mathfrak h}\) a Cartan subalgebra, W the Weyl group of \({\mathfrak g}\). It is shown in the article under review that an analogous result does not hold in case \({\mathfrak g}\) is an infinite dimensional Kac-Moody algebra. Instead, the authors construct an associative algebra \(\bar {\mathfrak A}\), containing \(U({\mathfrak g})\), and a surjection from \(\bar {\mathfrak A}\) onto \(U({\mathfrak h})\), which maps the centre \(\bar {\mathfrak c}\) of \(\bar {\mathfrak A}\) injectively into \(U({\mathfrak h})^ W\), which, together with fact that the centre \({\mathfrak c}\) of \(U({\mathfrak g})\) is properly contained in \(\bar {\mathfrak c}\), implies that \({\mathfrak c}\) is not isomorphic to \(U({\mathfrak h})^ W\). For \({\mathfrak g}\) affine it is shown that \(U({\mathfrak h})^ W\) is in fact isomorphic to \(\bar {\mathfrak c}\) and, in turn, is the polynomial algebra on two generators, whereas \({\mathfrak c}\) is the polynomial algebra on one generator.