Sheets and topology of primitive spectra for semisimple Lie algebras (Q5952283)

Let \(\mathcal X\) be the topological space (equipped with the Jacobson topology) of the primitive ideals in the enveloping algebra \(U(\mathfrak g)\) of the semisimple Lie algebra \(\mathfrak g\) with adjoint group \(G\). A basic open problem is to describe \(\mathcal X\) as a countable union of algebraic varieties with strata as large as possible. For this purpose, in the paper under review the authors introduce the notion of a sheet in \(\mathcal X\), similarly to the notion of sheet in the adjoint orbit space \(\mathfrak g/G\) with the quotient topology of the Zariski topology. The sheets in \(\mathcal X\) are defined as the maximal irreducible subsets of fixed Gelfand-Kirillov dimension and bounded Goldie rank (where GKdim and the Goldie rank of \(I\in\mathcal X\) are defined as these of the factor algebra \(U({\mathfrak g})/I\)). The main result is a characterization of the sheets by parabolic induction. Moreover, the Goldie rank is constant and maximal on a dense subset of a sheet. For a fixed \(n\) there are only a finite number of sheets of maximal Goldie rank \(n\). For Goldie rank 1, which corresponds to completely prime ideals, the authors extend the Dixmier map (from polarizable sheets in \({\mathfrak g}/G\) to primitive ideals) to some non-polarizable sheets. The purpose is to show, modulo certain natural assumptions, that the sheets with \(n=1\) are homeomorphic to sheets in \({\mathfrak g}/G\), and hence explicitly described as algebraic varieties. Along the way the authors obtain some interesting results of independent interest, as a difficult result concerning the support of the restrictions of Goldie rank polynomials on the walls, and an extension of a theorem of Soergel on the topology of \(\mathcal X\). Reviewer's remark: In the corrigendum, the authors correct a faulty proof of this paper, which relied on a result (labelled 5.2(\(*\))) whose proof was inadequate. The authors prove a weaker statement instead which suffices for the application they have in mind.