The Harish-Chandra isomorphism for reductive symmetric superpairs (Q1935513)

The paper is concerned with an analogue of the classical Harish-Chandra isomorphism for reductive symmetric superpairs \((g,k)\). The main results concerns pairs which are also strongly reductive and of even type (possessing an even Cartan subspace \(a\)). The motivation to study such symmetric superpairs comes from non-linear SUSY sigma-models. The restrictions mentioned above give the most relevant class for these purposes, which is also the class that resembles most closely the classical case of symmetric pairs, but is still a highly non-trivial generalization. The main result is a description of the algebra of \(k\)-invariants in \(U(g)/(U(g)k)\), as a subalgebra of \(S(a)\). Surprisingly, this algebra is not isomorphic to the subalgebra of \(S(a)\) originating from the Chevalley restriction theorem (the description of \(k\)-invariants in \(S(p)\) with \(g=k+p\), as determined by Alldridge, Hilgert, Zirnbauer in earlier work). However, the first algebra has a filtration for which the graded algebra is isomorphic to the second algebra. The proof of the main theorem has a geometric-analytic component, using the theory of cs supergroups and a purely algebraic component, generalizing a rank reduction technique of Lepowsky. The main theorem can also be seen as a generalization of the Harish-Chandra isomorphism for basic classical Lie superalgebras, obtained through different methods by Kac and Gorelik.