Evaluate the Killing form on the root-space decomposition. For arbitrary ,
Thus the Killing dual of a coroot is the root expansion
The factor two in the positive-root expression occurs because the contributions of and are equal.
For , let , ; the positive roots are . On their values are . Therefore
This uses the unscaled Killing form . Changing that normalization would change the scalar six.
Work with a finite-dimensional complex semisimple Lie algebra. The Dynkin diagram is obtained from its intrinsic root system, with several structure theorems entering the construction.
First choose a Cartan subalgebra . The semisimple structure theory gives the root-space decomposition
The nonzero roots span , root spaces have dimension one, and every root has its negative. The rank is .
Next use the Killing form. Its nondegeneracy on and its positive-definite restriction to the real coroot span identify the real root span with a Euclidean space. Explicitly, if , put . The sl2 subalgebra associated with a root supplies its normalized coroot and the integral pairing
The root-string theorem makes the reflection permute . Together with the absence of multiples other than , this shows that is a finite reduced root system and a crystallographic root system. These properties come from semisimple Lie algebra theory, not from the diagram's definition.
Choose a vector in that is not perpendicular to any root. Define the positive roots by positive inner product with this vector. The simple roots are those positive roots that cannot be expressed as sums of two positive roots. Root-system theory shows that they form a basis , and each root is an integer combination of them with coefficients all of one sign. Distinct simple roots have nonpositive inner product.
Use the standard Cartan matrix convention
There is one diagram vertex for each simple root. For , the integral off-diagonal entries are nonpositive and
Connect the two vertices with respectively zero, one, two or three edges. The corresponding angles are . A multiple edge carries an arrow toward the shorter root. For joined vertices, the length ratio is determined by ; hence the diagram records both angle and relative length.
For example, has simple roots and , giving two equal-length vertices joined by one edge: type . For , take and . Then
so the two vertices have a double edge directed toward , the shorter root: type .
Finally, orthogonal irreducible components of the root system correspond to the simple ideals of a Lie algebra in the semisimple Lie algebra, so its diagram is the disjoint union of their connected diagrams. Conjugacy of Cartan subalgebras and the Weyl group action on choices of positive roots make the resulting diagram independent of these choices up to isomorphism. Thus the vertices, edge multiplicities, arrows and connected components encode the simple-root geometry and the simple-ideal decomposition.
The Adjoint representation of a Lie algebra acts on the Lie algebra itself by . The Jacobi identity gives
Thus it is a Lie algebra representation. In the basis with , its matrices are
The column index labels the basis vector being acted on; this convention fixes the matrix signs.
Work in finite dimension over characteristic zero, as in the usual real or complex gauge algebras. A simple Lie algebra is nonabelian and has no nonzero proper Lie algebra ideal. A semisimple Lie algebra has no nonzero solvable ideal; equivalently it is a direct sum of simple ideals. The nondegenerate Killing form is . Its invariance follows from the representation identity and trace cyclicity:
For the reduction, take a nonzero proper ideal , if one exists, and define its Killing-orthogonal complement . Invariance makes it an ideal: for , , , . Moreover , because for , , and any ,
and the global Killing form is nondegenerate. Their intersection is consequently an abelian ideal: its elements lie in both commuting ideals. Semisimplicity forces that intersection to be zero. The dimension formula for a nondegenerate bilinear form then gives
The summands commute and are semisimple, since a solvable ideal in either summand would also be an ideal of . Repeating on smaller summands terminates in simple ideals. This proves the orthogonal ideal splitting for a nondegenerate Killing form and describes the required reduction; abelian one-dimensional factors do not occur in a semisimple algebra.
If with , invariance gives
so after lowering the output index with . The bracket already gives . These two adjacent transpositions generate all permutations, proving that the structure constants of a Lie algebra are completely antisymmetric. This is the antisymmetry of Killing-lowered structure constants; the scalar cancels in the chosen normalization.
For the gauge calculation write , , and . The representation generators here obey ; factors of and the gauge coupling are absorbed in this connection convention. Expanding the varied derivative gives
For this to equal , choose the gauge transformation in the derivative-plus-connection convention
Then all extra terms cancel, proving covariance of the gauge covariant derivative for arbitrary space-dependent parameters.
Apply both derivatives to a test field. The second derivatives commute and the terms involving one derivative of the field cancel, leaving the Yang-Mills field strength
Thus its components are
The already obtained variation can be written . The operator Jacobi identity then yields
or
Finally, with fixed space-time metric,
The contracted product is symmetric in , while is antisymmetric in those indices. Hence the Yang-Mills action density is gauge invariant, with the sign convention derived rather than assumed.
Use and . For an actual infinitesimal left Lie group action, define . Its fundamental vector fields obey with this convention.
Existence and its global obstruction. Preservation of the symplectic form gives . By Cartan's magic formula, is closed. Locally it equals ; globally this requires its class in to vanish. If it does for every , choose potentials linearly in and define
This gives the component Hamiltonians of a weakly Hamiltonian action. The assumption in the question does not alone guarantee a global moment map: on with , translation in preserves , but its contraction is , whose integral around the circle is nonzero. It is not an exact one-form. Thus no global real-valued component Hamiltonian exists for that circle action. The intended construction is valid locally, or globally with this exactness condition, for example if .
Matching the Lie algebra. On each connected component, the moment-map equivariance obstruction is the constant
Indeed, the identities and show that its differential vanishes. The Jacobi identity for the Poisson bracket says
Changing by a linear constant changes to . Consequently the necessary and sufficient infinitesimal condition is the cocycle must be a coboundary, so that the constants can be chosen with
Equivalently its class in vanishes. For a connected group this infinitesimal equivariance integrates to equivariance under its coadjoint action. A disconnected group can impose additional conditions. Here “coincides” means representing the specified Lie brackets; it does not guarantee injectivity when the group action has ineffective generators.
Proof using the Killing form. A nondegenerate Killing form makes semisimple. First, it is perfect: the -orthogonal complement of is the center by invariance, and the center is zero by nondegeneracy. For symplectic fields,
by Cartan's magic formula and the antihomomorphism sign. Every commutator therefore has an exact contraction. Perfectness supplies component Hamiltonians for every generator, even when is not simply connected: this is Hamiltonian existence for a semisimple symplectic action.
It remains to eliminate the cocycle, not merely to name an existence theorem. Define a linear operator on by . Antisymmetry of makes skew for . Combining its cocycle identity with invariance of gives
Choose by , possible because is nondegenerate. Since is a derivation, . Cyclicity of the matrix trace then gives
Thus , and . Taking removes , proving the required condition. This applies to semisimple Lie groups, including for , and for . It is nondegeneracy, not positive definiteness, that matters. Groups with a nonzero central Lie algebra, such as , do not satisfy this Killing-form criterion, although particular actions can still have equivariant moment maps.
The isotropic oscillator. On , put
The action , , preserves the Hermitian norm and the symplectic form, and therefore preserves . A Hermitian matrix parametrizes the Lie algebra generator . Its unitary moment map of an isotropic oscillator is
Since , direct differentiation yields
The matrix is Hermitian and corresponds precisely to ; no central defect remains. The full moment map can be identified, using the pairing with Hermitian matrices, with the rank-one matrix . The central generator gives , whose flow is . Globally , so the “ factor” refers to this central circle, rather than a literal direct-product decomposition.
The real orthogonal subgroup acts geometrically by , the cotangent lift of a diffeomorphism of . If is real antisymmetric and , then . For , this is , so its three components are the usual angular momentum .
The remaining six independent Hermitian directions can be taken as real symmetric matrices. Their moment functions span
The diagonal ones are the individual oscillator energies; their sum is . The off-diagonal ones correlate two oscillator modes. Their flows mix positions and momenta and are not cotangent lifts of the obvious spatial rotation action: for a real symmetric , and , rather than , . All nine quadratic functions commute with , since the entire unitary group action preserves the oscillator Hamiltonian.
Work in finite dimension over ; the characteristic-zero real version follows by complexification. The Cartan solvability criterion is
Its semisimplicity consequence, also often called Cartan's criterion, is is semisimple if and only if its Killing form is nondegenerate. We prove both forms.
The auxiliary results used are as follows. The Lie theorem simultaneously triangularizes every finite-dimensional representation of a complex solvable Lie algebra. The Engel theorem says that a matrix Lie algebra consisting entirely of nilpotent endomorphisms has a common annihilated nonzero vector and a basis making all its matrices strictly upper triangular; in particular it is a nilpotent Lie algebra. Nilpotent means that the lower central series terminates, which implies that the derived series terminates as well. Finally, the Additive Jordan decomposition writes any complex endomorphism uniquely as , where is diagonalizable, is nilpotent and they commute. On a generalized eigenspace , the two parts are and , and both are polynomials in . On endomorphisms, is diagonalizable, is nilpotent, and these are the Jordan parts of : the first assertion follows by splitting into maps between eigenspaces, and the second by expanding repeated commutators with the nilpotent .
First prove the linear trace version: if and
then is solvable. Fix and let be its generalized eigenspace decomposition. Define to act on by the scalar . We do not assume that , or belongs to .
On , has the form with nilpotent, whereas is multiplication by . Choose a polynomial with for every occurring eigenvalue difference , and with all its derivatives of positive order up to the relevant nilpotency index zero at . Such a polynomial exists by Hermite interpolation, or the Chinese remainder theorem for the pairwise coprime powers of . At its value is zero, so . Expanding now gives
Because and is an ideal, every positive power of sends into . The zero constant term therefore gives .
Express as a sum of commutators with . Cyclicity of trace and the hypothesis imply
But on , has trace , since the nilpotent part has trace zero. Hence
forcing every eigenvalue of to vanish. Thus every member of the derived algebra is a nilpotent endomorphism. By the Engel theorem, is nilpotent and therefore solvable; its derived series terminates, and adjoining the initial term shows that is solvable.
Conversely, if is solvable, the Lie theorem makes it upper triangular. Commutators of upper-triangular matrices have zero diagonal, and multiplying such a commutator by an upper-triangular matrix still has zero diagonal. Therefore the trace condition holds. Apply this equivalence to . Its trace pairing is the Killing form, and solvability of its image is equivalent to solvability of : the kernel is its abelian centre, so a terminating derived series in the quotient terminates after at most one more step in . This proves the solvability criterion.
For the semisimplicity criterion, let be the radical of the Killing form. Invariance makes a Lie algebra ideal. For , their adjoint actions on vanish, so computing trace in a basis adapted to gives . The solvability criterion applied to shows it is a solvable ideal. Thus a semisimple Lie algebra has and a nondegenerate Killing form.
Conversely, any nonzero solvable ideal has a last nonzero term in its derived series; this is an abelian ideal of . For , , the map sends into and vanishes on , so has trace zero. Hence . A nondegenerate Killing form therefore rules out nonzero solvable ideals, exactly the definition of semisimplicity.
For classification, nondegeneracy of the Killing form provides the duality and root-space pairings used to extract a reduced crystallographic root system from a semisimple Lie algebra. Classification then reduces to the finite Dynkin diagrams and reconstruction of the Lie algebra from its root data.
For a finite-dimensional Lie algebra, define its Killing form by
The trace identity proves symmetry, and linearity of trace proves bilinearity. The Jacobi identity gives . Consequently, by cyclic invariance of trace,
This is the invariance identity. Equivalently for all three elements.
If , and , invariance of the Killing form gives
Unless , some makes its coefficient nonzero, so the two root spaces are orthogonal. Similarly for every root: choose with and use that is abelian.
Now take nonzero . Nondegeneracy on supplies some element pairing nontrivially with . Its root-space decomposition shows that only its component can contribute. Thus the pairing between opposite root spaces is nonzero, and indeed nondegenerate. Therefore
Here nonzero means the bilinear pairing is not identically zero, not that every pair of vectors has a nonzero value.
If is orthogonal to all of , it is also orthogonal to every root space, by the preceding orthogonality. It is therefore orthogonal to all of , forcing . Hence is nondegenerate.
Put and . On the root space spanned by , their adjoint eigenvalues are and ; both act as zero on the Cartan subalgebra. Thus the Killing form is the sum of their products over the six roots. The pair of roots contributes , the pair contributes , and contributes . Hence
This also agrees with the Killing form of the special linear Lie algebra, for .
For a root , choose normalized root vectors , and the coroot element with
The requested sl2 subalgebra associated with a root is
These bracket relations identify its basis with the standard sl2 triple. The notation here denotes this subalgebra, not the root reflection used for the Weyl group.
The weight diagram of the Adjoint representation of has its six roots , , each of multiplicity one, and zero of multiplicity two, from the Cartan subalgebra.
Restrict to the root subalgebra generated by , and . The explicit decomposition into irreducible modules is
The first summand has weights . The second has weights , since . The third likewise has weights , since . The last commutes with all three generators and is trivial. These subspaces are stable under the sl2 triple, are independent and have dimensions totaling eight, so they exhaust the Adjoint representation.
Figure 1.
Adjoint sl3 weights coloured by their irreducible summands under the root sl2 subalgebra, with the two zero-weight vectors distinguished
. Details.
The Killing form value is the trace of . By the formula just proved, the four summands contribute . Therefore
For , define the Adjoint representation of a Lie algebra by . The Jacobi identity gives, for every ,
Thus preserves brackets and is a Lie algebra representation. Its Killing form is
Using the representation identity and the cyclic property of the trace,
The Killing form is also symmetric by cyclicity.
In a basis , write . The lowered structure constants satisfy
The first expression is antisymmetric in and the second in . These transpositions generate all permutations, so is totally antisymmetric.
An invariant subspace of under its Adjoint representation of a Lie algebra is exactly an ideal of a Lie algebra: . A simple Lie algebra has no nonzero proper ideal, proving the adjoint representation is irreducible.
Put . The same trace calculation proves invariance of the Trace form of a Lie algebra representation:
Because the are anti-Hermitian, is a real symmetric bilinear form. The Killing form of a simple compact Lie algebra is negative definite. Define a real linear map by . Invariance of both forms implies that commutes with every , while symmetry makes self-adjoint for the positive inner product . By the spectral theorem, its real eigenspaces are invariant under the Adjoint representation of a Lie algebra. Irreducibility forces a single eigenvalue, so and . This also avoids the extra care needed when applying the complex form of the Schur lemma to a real vector space.
The kernel of is an ideal of a Lie algebra. It cannot be all of : a trivial representation of dimension greater than one is reducible. Simplicity therefore makes faithful. For every nonzero ,
Hence the positive trace index for a compact simple Lie algebra gives
in the adapted basis.
For the cubic trace tensor of a Lie algebra representation, the identity
expands to
Set , , , . Cyclicity of converts to and to . Thus the invariance identity for a cubic trace tensor is
For the final contraction, it is important to keep the specified index-raising convention. In the adapted basis write . Then , while raising the last two indices with gives . Total antisymmetry and the definition of the Killing form imply
Only the antisymmetric part of in contributes, so
Consequently the Killing-normalized contraction of a cubic trace tensor is
The negative sign printed in the last requested identity is incompatible with raising indices by the inverse Killing form. The opposite sign is obtained if one instead defines the lowered structure constants using the positive Euclidean metric, a different convention from the one specified.
For a concrete check, take the two-dimensional representation of with , where the are Pauli matrices. Then
Their contraction is , confirming the positive sign with and providing a counterexample to the printed sign.