The discriminants associated to isotropy representations of symmetric spaces (Q430767)

The author considers a generalization of discriminants to symmetric spaces. Recall, that the discriminant of some real \(n\times n\) matrix \(Y\) with eigenvalues \(\theta_i\) is defined by \[ \delta(Y)=\prod_{i<j} (\theta_i-\theta_j)^2\,. \] The discriminant measures the squared distance of the eigenvalues of \(Y\) and vanishes if the multiplicity of some eigenvalue is greater than one. The generalization of this construction to symmetric spaces is related to the isotropy representation: Let \(M=G/K\) be a symmetric space and let \(K:\mathfrak{p}\longrightarrow \mathfrak{p}\) its isotropy representation. An orbit \(Gv\) for \(v\in \mathfrak{p}\) is principal iff \(v\) is regular. If \(G=SL(n, \mathbb{R})\) and \(\mathfrak{p}=\mathfrak{sl}(n, \mathbb{R})\) then this is equivalent to the eigenvalues of \(v\) having multiplicity one, hence to a nonvanishing discriminant. Following this idea, the author defines the discriminant of a representation \((G,V)\) as \(\delta(v)=k^2\text{vol}(Gv)\) if \(v\) is regular and \(0\) if \(v\) is singular. He studies various special cases and considers the problem if the discriminant can be represented as a sum of squares. He proves, that for polar representations this is indeed the case.