Tits construction of the exceptional simple Lie algebras (Q635865)

The classical conception of the Tits construction of exceptional simple Lie algebras over fields of characteristic other than \(2\) or \(3\) depends on two algebras: an alternative algebra of degree two and a Jordan algebra of degree three. The most outstanding such constructions appear when the alternative algebra is taken to be a composition algebra while the Jordan counterpart is a form of the Jordan algebra of \(3\times 3\) hermitian matrices over a second composition algebra. Freudenthal's magic square is constructed along these ideas. Tits construction has been extended in several directions. On the one hand some simple Jordan superalgebras have been used (instead of Jordan algebras) as ingredients of the construction. The benefit of this has been the enlargement of Freudenthal's magic square to a rectangle including (under certain restrictions on the characteristic), the exceptional simple Lie superalgebras \(D(2,1;t)\), \(G(3)\) and \(F(4)\). As pointed out by the author, in characteristic \(5\) another simple Jordan superalgebra, the \(10\)-dimensional Kac superalgebra can be used leading to the discovery of a new simple modular Lie superalgebra. On the other hand some authors (including the one of the paper under review) have worked on a more symmetric construction which has as ingredients a couple of composition algebras and their triality algebras. This construction turns out to be symmetric on the two composition algebras involved. This symmetry can be observed in Freudenthal's magic square but its origin is not obvious from Tits construction. Besides the symmetric construction works too over fields of characteristic \(3\). Furthermore, over fields of characteristic \(3\) there are nontrivial composition superalgebras. These, can be used as arguments of the symmetric construction of Freudenthal's magic square. Thus one can obtain a larger square with two more rows and columns in which one obtains (mostly) simple Lie superalgebras. Except for one, the Lie superalgebras appearing this way have no counterpart in Kac's classification: there are \(10\) new simple modular Lie superalgebras in characteristic \(3\). This paper is a review exploring the two ways in which the Tits construction has been extended.