Bibliography:
- maths-people.anu.edu.au/~andrews/DG/ Lectures on Differential Geometry by Ben Andrews
Solving differential equations was apparently Lie's original motivation for developing Lie groups. It is therefore likely one of the most understandable ways to approach it.
It appears that Lie's goal was to understand when can a differential equation have an explicitly written solution, much like Galois theory had done for algebraic equations. Both approaches use symmetry as the key tool.
- www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Frewer/publication/269465435_Lie-Groups_as_a_Tool_for_Solving_Differential_Equations/links/548cbf250cf214269f20e267/Lie-Groups-as-a-Tool-for-Solving-Differential-Equations.pdf Lie-Groups as a Tool for Solving Differential Equations by Michael Frewer. Slides with good examples.
Like everything else in Lie groups, first start with the matrix as discussed at Section "Lie algebra of a matrix Lie group".
Intuitively, a Lie algebra is a simpler object than a Lie group. Without any extra structure, groups can be very complicated non-linear objects. But a Lie algebra is just an algebra over a field, and one with a restricted bilinear map called the Lie bracket, that has to also be alternating and satisfy the Jacobi identity.
Because of the Lie group-Lie algebra correspondence, we know that there is almost a bijection between each Lie group and the corresponding Lie algebra. So it makes sense to try and study the algebra instead of the group itself whenever possible, to try and get insight and proofs in that simpler framework. This is the key reason why people study Lie algebras. One is philosophically reminded of how normal subgroups are a simpler representation of group homomorphisms.
To make things even simpler, because all vector spaces of the same dimension on a given field are isomorphic, the only things we need to specify a Lie group through a Lie algebra are:Note that the Lie bracket can look different under different basis of the Lie algebra however. This is shown for example at Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) page 71 for the Lorentz group.
- the dimension
- the Lie bracket
As mentioned at Lie Groups, Physics, and Geometry by Robert Gilmore (2008) Chapter 4 "Lie Algebras", taking the Lie algebra around the identity is mostly a convention, we could treat any other point, and things are more or less equivalent.
Elements of a Lie algebra can (should!) be seen a continuous analogue to the generating set of a group in finite groups.
For continuous groups however, we can't have a finite generating set in the strict sense, as a finite set won't ever cover every possible point.
But the generator of a Lie algebra can be finite.
And just like in finite groups, where you can specify the full group by specifying only the relationships between generating elements, in the Lie algebra you can almost specify the full group by specifying the relationships between the elements of a generator of the Lie algebra.
The reason why the algebra works out well for continuous stuff is that by definition an algebra over a field is a vector space with some extra structure, and we know very well how to make infinitesimal elements in a vector space: just multiply its vectors by a constant that cana be arbitrarily small.
Bibliography:
Lie Groups, Physics, and Geometry by Robert Gilmore (2008) 7.2 "The covering problem" gives some amazing intuition on the subject as usual.
A single exponential map is not enough to recover a simple Lie group from its algebra by
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The product of a exponential of the compact algebra with that of the non-compact algebra recovers a simple Lie from its algebra by
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Furthermore, the non-compact part is always isomorphic to , only the non-compact part can have more interesting structure.
Every Lie algebra has a unique single corresponding simply connected Lie group by
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This simply connected is called the universal covering group.
Furthermore, TODO confirm it is possible that a solution does not exist at all if and aren't sufficiently small.
This formula is likely the basis for the Lie group-Lie algebra correspondence. With it, we express the actual group operation in terms of the Lie algebra operations.
Notably, remember that a algebra over a field is just a vector space with one extra product operation defined.
Vector spaces are simple because all vector spaces of the same dimension on a given field are isomorphic, so besides the dimension, once we define a Lie bracket, we also define the corresponding Lie group.
Since a group is basically defined by what the group operation does to two arbitrary elements, once we have that defined via the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula, we are basically done defining the group in terms of the algebra.
Local symmetries appear to be a synonym to internal symmetry, see description at: Section "Internal and spacetime symmetries".
A local symmetry is a transformation that you apply a different transformation for each point, instead of a single transformation for every point.
Bibliography:
- lecture 3
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/48188/local-and-global-symmetries
- www.physics.rutgers.edu/grad/618/lects/localsym.pdf by Joel Shapiro gives one nice high level intuitive idea:
- Quora:
More precisely, each generator of the corresponding Lie algebra leads to one separate conserved current, such that a single symmetry can lead to multiple conserved currents.
This is basically the local symmetry version of Noether's theorem.
Then to maintain charge conservation, we have to maintain local symmetry, which in turn means we have to add a gauge field as shown at Video "Deriving the qED Lagrangian by Dietterich Labs (2018)".
Bibliography:
- photonics101.com/relativistic-electrodynamics/gauge-invariance-action-charge-conservation#show-solution has a good explanation of the Gauge transformation. TODO how does that relate to symmetry?
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/57901/noether-theorem-gauge-symmetry-and-conservation-of-charge
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
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