Pairs of semisimple Lie algebras and their maximal reductive subalgebras (Q930355)

The author studies pairs \((\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{g}_1)\) of semisimple Lie algebras over a field \(\mathbb{K}\) of characteristic \(0\), where \(\mathfrak{g}_1\subset\mathfrak{g}\). Such pairs appear in various branching problems where one studies restrictions of an irreducible representation of \(\mathfrak{g}\) to the subalgebra \(\mathfrak{g}_1\). Assume that the restriction of the Killing form of \(\mathfrak{g}\) to \(\mathfrak{g}_1\times \mathfrak{g}_1\) is non-degenerate and that the subalgebra \(\mathfrak{g}_1\) is reductive in \(\mathfrak{g}\). Let \(\mathfrak{p}\) be the Killing orthogonal of \(\mathfrak{g}_1\) in \(\mathfrak{g}\), and so \(\mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{g}_1 \oplus \mathfrak{p}\). There are three questions arising naturally in this context, as posed in the introduction of the article. (1) Which pairs \((\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{g}_1)\) have the property that for any Cartan subalgebra \( \mathfrak{h}_1\) of \(\mathfrak{g}_1\) there exists a unique Cartan subalgebra \(\mathfrak{h}\) of \(\mathfrak{g}\) such that \(\mathfrak{h}_1\subset \mathfrak{h}\)? (2) Which pairs \((\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{g}_1)\) have the property that \(\mathfrak{g}_1\) is self-normalizing in \(\mathfrak{g}\), i.e. that N\(_{\mathfrak{g}}(\mathfrak{g}_1)=\mathfrak{g}_1\)? (3) Which paris \((\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{g}_1)\) have the property that ad\(_{\mathfrak{g}}(\mathfrak{g}_1)\) acts irreducibly on \(\mathfrak{p}\), i.e. that \(\mathfrak{p}\) is irreducible as \(\mathfrak{g}_1\)-module for the adjoint representation? For instance, if \(\mathfrak{g}\) and \(\mathfrak{g}_1\) are Lie algebras over \(\overline{\mathbb{K}}\) and if \(\mathfrak{h}\subset \mathfrak{g}\) resp. \(\mathfrak{h}_1\subset \mathfrak{g}_1\) are Cartan subalgebras satisfying the property in (1). Then this property is of importance if one wants to understand how the roots systems of \((\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{h})\) and \((\mathfrak{g}_1,\mathfrak{h}_1)\) are related to each other. The authors gives answers to the three questions. The main result, Theorem 1.2, considers the case where the subalgebra of \(\mathfrak{g}\) is given by an automorphism \(\sigma\) of \(\mathfrak{g}\) of order \(m\), assuming that \(\mathbb{K}\) contains a \(m\)th root of unity. This generalizes the case \(m=2\) (i.e. the case of symmetric Lie algebras). Theorem 1.2 shows that such pairs always have property (1) and that if \(m\) is a prime, property (2) is always fulfilled. The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 presents the topic and the main theorem. In Section 2, the notations are introduced. Then some general results are given in Section 3. After that, the main Theorem is proved in Section 4 (Corollary 4.5 and Theorem 4.6). In Section 5, the complement \(\mathfrak{p}\) is studied in more detail.