Group of even permutations.
Note that odd permutations don't form a subgroup of the symmetric group like the even permutations do, because the composition of two odd permutations is an even permutation.
The orthogonal group has 2 connected components:
- one with determinant +1, which is itself a subgroup known as the special orthogonal group. These are pure rotations without a reflection.
- the other with determinant -1. This is not a subgroup as it does not contain the origin. It represents rotations with a reflection.
It is instructive to visualize how the looks like in :
- you take the first basis vector and move it to any other. You have therefore two angular parameters.
- you take the second one, and move it to be orthogonal to the first new vector. (you can choose a circle around the first new vector, and so you have another angular parameter.
- at last, for the last one, there are only two choices that are orthogonal to both previous ones, one in each direction. It is this directio, relative to the others, that determines the "has a reflection or not" thing
As a result it is isomorphic to the direct product of the special orthogonal group by the cyclic group of order 2:
A low dimensional example:because you can only do two things: to flip or not to flip the line around zero.
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.
Lie Groups, Physics, and Geometry by Robert Gilmore (2008) Updated 2024-12-15 +Created 1970-01-01
The author seems to have uploaded the entire book by chapters at: www.physics.drexel.edu/~bob/LieGroups.html
And the author is the cutest: www.physics.drexel.edu/~bob/Personal.html.
Overview:
- Chapter 3: gives a bunch of examples of important matrix Lie groups. These are done by imposing certain types of constraints on the general linear group, to obtain subgroups of the general linear group. Feels like the start of a classification
- Chapter 4: defines Lie algebra. Does some basic examples with them, but not much of deep interest, that is mostl left for Chapter 7
- Chapter 5: calculates the Lie algebra for all examples from chapter 3
- Chapter 6: don't know
- Chapter 7: describes how the exponential map links Lie algebras to Lie groups
Subgroup of the Poincaré group without translations. Therefore, in those, the spacetime origin is always fixed.
Or in other words, it is as if two observers had their space and time origins at the exact same place. However, their space axes may be rotated, and one may be at a relative speed to the other to create a Lorentz boost. Note however that if they are at relative speeds to one another, then their axes will immediately stop being at the same location in the next moment of time, so things are only valid infinitesimally in that case.
This group is made up of matrix multiplication alone, no need to add the offset vector: space rotations and Lorentz boost only spin around and bend things around the origin.
One definition: set of all 4x4 matrices that keep the Minkowski inner product, mentioned at Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) page 63. This then implies:
The one parameter subgroup of a Lie group for a given element of its Lie algebra is a subgroup of given by:
Intuitively, is a direction, and is how far we move along a given direction. This intuition is especially vivid in for example in the case of the Lie algebra of , the rotation group.
One parameter subgroups can be seen as the continuous analogue to the cycle of an element of a group.
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.