Cross products, invariants, and centralizers (Q1702689)

Let ${\mathbb F}$ be a field of characteristic different from 2 and consider a vector space $V$ over ${\mathbb F}$ with a nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form. A cross product on $V$ is a bilinear multiplication $\times$ satisfying appropriate conditions with respect to the bilinear form. It is known that cross products exist only for vector spaces of dimension 3 or 7. One may then consider the group $\Aut (V,\times)$ of automorphisms of the cross product algebra, which is a special orthogonal group when $V$ has dimension 3 and a simple algebraic group of type $G_2$ when $V$ has dimension 7. This group acts naturally on a tensor product space $V^{\otimes n}$, and the focus of this paper is understanding the group of homomorphisms $\mathrm{Hom}_{\Aut (V,\times)}(V^{\otimes n},V^{\otimes m})$, including the special case of the endomorphism algebra $\mathrm{End}_{\Aut (V,\times)}(V^{\otimes n})$. \par To this end, the authors relate these Hom-groups to morphisms in a 3-tangle category ${\mathcal T}$. The objects in ${\mathcal T}$ are finite sets of the form $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ (denoted by $[n]$) for a positive integer $n$, along with the empty set. Morphisms in the category are certain equivalence classes of graphs, which are generated by an explicit set of ``basic morphisms.'' The authors' version of the 3-tangle category and related concepts is a slight modification of that in [\textit{L. Cadorin} et al., in: Algebra and number theory. Proceedings of the silver jubilee conference, Hyderabad, India, December 11--16, 2003. New Delhi: Hindustan Book Agency. 34--65 (2005; Zbl 1107.17001)]. Associated to a cross product space $V$ as above, there exists a functor from ${\mathcal T}$ to the category of finite-dimensional vector spaces over ${\mathbb F}$ that maps $[n]$ to $V^{\otimes n}$ (and satisfying other desired properties). Under appropriate conditions, this functor ${\mathcal T}$ can be restricted to a quotient category ${\mathcal T}_{\Gamma}$, where morphisms are taken modulo a set of relations $\Gamma$. Over an infinite field (assumed further to not have characteristic 3 in the dimension 7 case), for an explicit set of relations $\Gamma$, the authors show that the image of $\mathrm{Mor}_{{\mathcal T}_{\Gamma}}([n],[m])$ is precisely $\mathrm{Hom}_{\Aut (V,\times)}(V^{\otimes n},V^{\otimes m})$. More significantly, over a field of characteristic zero, it is shown that this map is in fact a linear isomorphism; hence giving a graphical description of the latter Hom-groups. \par The authors observe that their arguments allow one to recover the First Fundamental Theorem of Invariant Theory for the group of type $G_2$ (acting on its natural 7-dimensional module). The authors also apply their methods to the 3-dimensional Kaplansky superalgebra, deriving a similar result (again, over characteristic zero). In this case, the corresponding automorphism group is a special orthosymplectic group. Equivalently, this may be replaced with an orthosymplectic Lie superalgebra.