Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-2/3/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 2 3 Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-06
Work over . Decompose as the direct sum of the generalized eigenspaces of . Define to be on and set . Then is a diagonalisable endomorphism, is a nilpotent endomorphism, and they commute. For uniqueness, any commuting decomposition has and commuting with , hence preserving each . Decompose further into eigenspaces of . On a nonzero such space with eigenvalue , the operator has only the eigenvalue , so . Since is diagonalizable, throughout . Thus and . This is the Additive Jordan decomposition.
The Chinese remainder theorem for the pairwise coprime polynomials also gives a polynomial with , where is the largest Jordan block size. Consequently and . This polynomial description shows that both parts preserve every -invariant subspace.
On the operator is the scalar , so it is diagonalizable. The nilpotence of commutation by a nilpotent endomorphism makes nilpotent. They commute, since . Uniqueness of the Additive Jordan decomposition therefore gives the adjoint compatibility of additive Jordan decomposition:Now let be a complex semisimple Lie algebra and . Since the semisimple part of is a polynomial in , it preserves . Thus . By the Weyl complete reducibility theorem, the Adjoint representation of on has a decomposition into invariant subspaces. Write with and . For , the vector lies in , and invariance of puts it in as well. Hence .
Decompose into Irreducible Lie algebra representations. Each is preserved by and by , hence by . The Schur lemma makes . A semisimple Lie algebra is a perfect Lie algebra, so every representing element of has zero trace on every . Also , because is nilpotent there. It follows that . In characteristic zero, , so . Therefore and . This proves that semisimple matrix Lie algebras are closed under additive Jordan decomposition, including representations with repeated isomorphic irreducible summands.
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