Lyndon-Shirshov basis and anti-commutative algebras (Q373877)

The paper under review studies free Lie algebras and their bases as vector spaces. The first constructions of bases of the free Lie algebra \(\text{Lie}(X)\) were given by Hall and independently by Shirshov; these can be found in almost every monograph devoted to the subject. In the paper under review the authors follow a new approach to constructing such bases. More precisely, they first construct a linear basis \(N(X)\) of the free anti-commutative algebra \(AC(X)\). They evaluate the Jacobian on \(N(X)\) in \(AC(X)\) and get the ideal \(J(X)\) generated by these evaluations. As a first step to constructing a basis for \(\text{Lie}(X)\) the authors find a basis of the ideal \(J(X)\). They also prove that the pair \((AC(X), N(X))\) satisfies the composition--diamond lemma (the ordering is the usual lex-deg one). It turns out that the irreducible monomials in \(N(X)\) with respect to the evaluations of the Jacobian on \(N(X)\) are precisely the Lyndon-Shirshov monomials. The latter allows the authors to construct a basis for \(\text{Lie}(X)\). The paper is well written and also contains a wealth of historical references for the topics considered.