Representation Theory Lecture 12
Arun Ram
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Melbourne
Parkville, VIC 3010 Australia
aram@unimelb.edu.au
Last update: 20 May 2013
Representation Theory Lecture 12
since
and
Then
Another choice is
where
Since
with
and if then
where, for
and
if
and is given by
The root system
The Dynkin diagram
The fundamental chamber is
This chamber is on the positive side of the hyperplanes
where
and
The walls of are
and the Dynkin diagram is
The Weyl group
is generated by the reflection in the hyperplanes
Using the basis
for the group is generated by
and
The character of the adjoint representation
Let be a
The character of is
is the space of
The weights of the adjoint representation for are
their negatives and the weight 0:
The character of is
where
In this example
The Weyl denominator formula says
and the Weyl character formula says
The crystal
has basis
and crystals are sets of paths in
which are closed under the action of the root operators
corresponding the the wall of
The weights of are
and these are some of the vertices of the 5 dimensional cube.
The highest weight path in
can be taken to be the straight line path from 0 to
Most of the time (in
the root operators are taking a straight line path to a straight line path. The only exceptions are
For the "standard model" in particle physics it is important to understand how this representation decomposes under the action of the subalgebras
These restrictions are obtained by ignoring the operators
and
The crystal graph
is (all paths are straight line paths except the 5 exceptional ones listed above):
The crystal graph of
Notes and References
This is a typed copy of handwritten notes by Arun Ram on 28/10/2008.
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