Over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, any two Cartan subalgebras of the symplectic Lie algebra are conjugate by the symplectic group. A Cartan subalgebra is an abelian Lie algebra and equals its centralizer of a Lie subalgebra. The symplectic centralizer decomposition therefore forces all its weight spaces in to be one-dimensional, nonzero, and paired by opposite weights of a representation. Choose a basis vector in each space, normalizing the perfect pairing with its opposite to one. These vectors form a symplectic basis . In this basis, is contained in the Lie subalgebra of diagonal matrices with entries . All those diagonal matrices commute with , so equality with its centralizer of a Lie subalgebra forces equality with the entire diagonal Lie subalgebra. Repeating for gives a second symplectic basis. The linear map sending one symplectic basis to the other belongs to the symplectic group and conjugates the two diagonal Lie subalgebras, proving the claim.
Choose representatives as in part (b). We use the symplectic centralizer decomposition
To prove it, a linear map commuting with every must preserve every weight space: if , then . Conversely, preserving the weight spaces makes a linear map commute with the scalar action of every on each space.
On , the symplectic Lie algebra condition says exactly that the restriction belongs to . On , use the perfect pairing from part (b) to identify with the dual space . The action on can be arbitrary, but its action on must be , where is the dual map. Indeed,
determines uniquely. There are no additional conditions between different pairs because vanishes between different pairs. Every choice of these blocks therefore gives an element of the centralizer of a Lie subalgebra. The block correspondence preserves Lie brackets, proving the claimed direct sum of Lie algebras.
The general linear Lie algebra is an abelian Lie algebra exactly when : for , the matrix units satisfy . A nonzero symplectic vector space has a symplectic basis and contains a two-dimensional symplectic subspace. The symplectic Lie algebra acting on that plane, extended by zero on its symplectic orthogonal complement, contains the matrices and with . Thus is an abelian Lie algebra exactly when .
Since different summands in a direct sum of Lie algebras commute, we obtain the precise criterion
Equivalently, there are distinct nonzero weights of a representation, each with a one-dimensional weight space. The condition concerns multiplicities in the defining representation; it does not assert that for every such .