Lie bracket of a matrix Lie group by Ciro Santilli 34 Updated +Created
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.