More on characteristic polynomials of Lie algebras (Q6146424)

Let \(L\) be a finite dimensional Lie algebra over an algebraically closed field and \(\phi: L \to \mathfrak{gl}(V)\) a finite-dimensional representation of the Lie algebra \(L\). Given a basis \(e_1, \ldots, e_n\) for \(L\), the authors study the \textit{characteristic polynomial} of \(\phi\) as \[ p_{L,\phi}(z_0, \ldots, z_n) = \det \left( z_0 I + \sum_{i=1}^n z_i \phi(e_i) \right). \] It is easy to see that a change of basis for \(L\) gives an equivalence relation on the set of polynomials, where the element \(z_0\) remains fixed (see Section 2 for an exact formulation). In recent work these characteristic polynomials have been studied for simple and solvable Lie algebras. Indeed, for simple Lie algebras the representations are uniquely determined by the characteristic polynomials from the work in [\textit{A. Geng} et al., ``Characteristic polynomials and finitely dimensional representations of simple Lie Algebras'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2211.00979}]. On the other hand, solvable Lie algebras are characterized by the fact that their characteristic polynomials are completely reducible, i.e.~a product of polynomials of degree one, see [\textit{Z. Hu} and \textit{P. B. Zhang}, Linear Algebra Appl. 563, 426--439 (2019; Zbl 1405.17018)]. In the paper under review, the authors continue the study of the characteristic polynomial on two different aspects. On the one hand, they further study the case of simple Lie algebras, describing exactly which polynomials can occur as the characteristic polynomials of the representations, see Theorem 3.7. On the other hand, they characterize nilpotent Lie algebras via the characteristic polynomial of the adjoint representation, namely \(L\) is nilpotent if and only if \(p_{L,\text{ad}} = z_0^{n}\). The paper introduces all necessary ingredients for the main result and the proofs are easy to follow, making the paper a short but pleasant read.