Continuous symmetry by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Basically a synonym for Lie group which is the way of modelling them.
Local symmetry by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Appears to be a synonym for: gauge symmetry.
A local symmetry is a transformation that you apply a different transformation for each point, instead of a single transformation for every point.
TODO what's the point of a local symmetry?
Bibliography:
Matrix Lie group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This important and common simple case has easy properties.
For this sub-case, we can define the Lie algebra of a Lie group as the set of all matrices such that for all :
If we fix a given and vary , we obtain a subgroup of . This type of subgroup is known as a one parameter subgroup.
The immediate question is then if every element of can be reached in a unique way (i.e. is the exponential map a bijection). By looking at the matrix logarithm however we conclude that this is not the case for real matrices, but it is for complex matrices.
TODO example it can be seen that the Lie algebra is not closed matrix multiplication, even though the corresponding group is by definition. But it is closed under the Lie bracket operation.
This makes it clear how the Lie bracket can be seen as a "measure of non-commutativity"
Because the Lie bracket has to be a bilinear map, all we need to do to specify it uniquely is to specify how it acts on every pair of some basis of the Lie algebra.
Then, together with the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula and the Lie group-Lie algebra correspondence, this forms an exceptionally compact description of a Lie group.
Symplectic group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Intuition, please? Example? mathoverflow.net/questions/278641/intuition-for-symplectic-groups The key motivation seems to be related to Hamiltonian mechanics. The two arguments of the bilinear form correspond to each set of variables in Hamiltonian mechanics: the generalized positions and generalized momentums, which appear in the same number each.
Seems to be set of matrices that preserve a skew-symmetric bilinear form, which is comparable to the orthogonal group, which preserves a symmetric bilinear form. More precisely, the orthogonal group has:
and its generalization the indefinite orthogonal group has:
where S is symmetric. So for the symplectic group we have matrices Y such as:
where A is antisymmetric. This is explained at: www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucahad0/7302_handout_13.pdf They also explain there that unlike as in the analogous orthogonal group, that definition ends up excluding determinant -1 automatically.
Therefore, just like the special orthogonal group, the symplectic group is also a subgroup of the special linear group.
general linear group over a finite field of order . Remember that due to the classification of finite fields, there is one single field for each prime power .
Exactly as over the real numbers, you just put the finite field elements into a matrix, and then take the invertible ones.
Lie algebra of by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
For every matrix in the set of all n-by-y square matrices , has inverse .
Note that this works even if is not invertible, and therefore not in !
Therefore, the Lie algebra of is the entire .
Special linear group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Specials sub case of the general linear group when the determinant equals exactly 1.
Lie algebra of by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This is a good first concrete example of a Lie algebra. Shown at Lie Groups, Physics, and Geometry by Robert Gilmore (2008) Chapter 4.2 "How to linearize a Lie Group" has an example.
We can use use the following parametrization of the special linear group on variables , and :
Every element with this parametrization has determinant 1:
Furthermore, any element can be reached, because by independently settting , and , , and can have any value, and once those three are set, is fixed by the determinant.
To find the elements of the Lie algebra, we evaluate the derivative on each parameter at 0:
Remembering that the Lie bracket of a matrix Lie group is really simple, we can then observe the following Lie bracket relations between them:
One key thing to note is that the specific matrices , and are not really fundamental: we could easily have had different matrices if we had chosen any other parametrization of the group.
TODO confirm: however, no matter which parametrization we choose, the Lie bracket relations between the three elements would always be the same, since it is the number of elements, and the definition of the Lie bracket, that is truly fundamental.
Lie Groups, Physics, and Geometry by Robert Gilmore (2008) Chapter 4.2 "How to linearize a Lie Group" then calculates the exponential map of the vector as:
with:
TODO now the natural question is: can we cover the entire Lie group with this exponential? Lie Groups, Physics, and Geometry by Robert Gilmore (2008) Chapter 7 "EXPonentiation" explains why not.
Just like for the finite general linear group, the definition of special also works for finite fields, where 1 is the multiplicative identity!
Note that the definition of orthogonal group may not have such a clear finite analogue on the other hand.
Isometry group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The group of all transformations that preserve some bilinear form, notable examples:

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