Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 4 5 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write and . Block multiplication givesIts vanishing is equivalent toThis identifies with the symplectic Lie algebra .
We now supply the requested root-space decomposition, including explicit vectors. Let be the matrix units, put , and define the linear functionals on the diagonal Cartan subalgebra by . Then . The Cn root system and a corresponding matrix root basis of the symplectic Lie algebra areEach listed vector satisfies the block conditions just proved. For a diagonal matrix , the matrix unit calculation gives all the requested eigenvalues explicitly:The diagonal vectors and difference-root vectors span every possible block. The sum-root and doubled-root vectors span all symmetric and blocks. They are linearly independent, as is evident from their disjoint independent block entries. Equivalently there are of them, exactly the dimension of . The zero weight space is precisely : a zero weight forces diagonal and every entry of to vanish. Hence every nonzero root space is one-dimensional and