Products of free groups in Lie groups (Q2019286)

Let \(G\) be real connected simple Lie group. Define the free subgroup rank of \(G\) by \[ \nu (G) = \max \{n \geq 0 \;;\; (F_2)^n \mbox{ embeds into } G\} , \] where \(F_2\) is the free group of rank 2, and \(n\) can be infinite. Let \(\mathfrak {g}\) be the Lie algebra of \(G\). So \(\mathfrak {g}\) is either a real form of a complex simple Lie algebra, or \(\mathfrak {g}\) itself is a complex simple Lie algebra. For these two cases, we let \(\Phi\) be the root system of \(\mathfrak {g} \otimes \mathbb {C}\) or \(\mathfrak {g}\) accordingly. Two roots \(\alpha, \beta \in \Phi\) are said to be strongly orthogonal if they are orthogonal and \(\alpha \pm \beta \not\in \Phi\). The strongly orthogonal rank \(\mbox{sork}(\Phi)\) is defined as the maximal cardinality of a set of pairwise strongly orthogonal roots in \(\Phi\). This article shows that \[ \nu (G) = \mbox{sork}(\Phi) \] except for \(\mathfrak {g} = \mathfrak {s}\mathfrak {o}(p,q)\) where \(p,q\) are odd and \(p+q\) is divisible by 4, and in that case \(\nu (G) = \mbox{sork}(\Phi) -1\). It also provides \(\mbox{sork}(\Phi)\) for all complex simple Lie algebras. Finally, it extends this result to general real Lie groups.