Minimal faithful representations of the free 2-step nilpotent Lie algebra of the rank \(r\) (Q2214144)

Given a Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\) and a vector space on a field of characteristc zero, the invariant \[ \mu(\mathfrak{g}) = \min\{\dim V \mid (\pi, V ) \text{ is a faithful representation of } \mathfrak{g}\} \] turns out to be relevant for several aspects of representation theory of Lie algebras. For instance, Milnor and Auslander related the problem of determining whether a given group is the fundamental group of a compact complete affinely-flat manifold with that of finding Lie algebras admitting faithful representations of small dimension. The computation of \(\mu(\mathfrak{g})\) brings some computational difficulties in general. For instance, \(\mu(\mathfrak{g})\) is known only for a restricted number of families of Lie algebras (among these one should mention abelian Lie algebras, semisimple Lie algebras, nilpotent Lie algebras, Heisenberg Lie algebras, but the problem is open for solvable nonnilpotent Lie algebras). The authors show an exact bound for \(\mu(\mathfrak{g})\), when \(\mathfrak{g}\) is the free 2-step nilpotent Lie algebra of finite rank \(r\) (on a field of characteristic zero). The analytic expression of \(\mu(\mathfrak{g})\) is presented in the main theorem (at p. 721) and is essentially proportional to \(r\) via the multiplicative factor \(\sqrt{2}\).