Last update: 12 May 2014
This is an excerpt of the lecture notes Discrete complex reflection groups by V.L. Popov. Lectures delivered at the Mathematical Institute, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, October 1980.
We assume in this chapter that
Let be an irreducible infinite As we have seen in the example above, there are two possibilities: either is noncrystallographic (i.e. is not compact) or is crystallographic is compact). First, we shall describe the structure of noncrystallographic groups. To do this we need an auxiliary construction.
Let us consider as a real vector space (of dimension A linear subspace of this real vector space is called a real form of if
a) | the natural map is an isomorphism, i.e. some (hence, any) of is a of |
b) | the restriction of to is realvalued (hence is euclidean with respect to |
If is a real form of then is the complexification of
Let be a point. We can consider as a real affine space of dimension The affine subspace of this affine space is called a real form of and is called the complexification of
It is clear that every real euclidean linear, resp. affine space is isomorphic to a real form of a certain complex hermitian linear, resp. affine space.
Proposition. One has the following properties:
1) | acts transitively on the set of real forms of |
2) | The group of motions of acts transitively on the set of real forms of |
3) | Every motion of a euclidean affine space can be extended in a unique way to a motion of This motion is called the complexification of (and is called the real form of |
4) | Specifically, is a reflection iff is a reflection. |
Proof. | |
Proof is left to the reader. |
This proposition gives a method for constructing noncrystallographic infinite Indeed, let be an infinite (real) Then it is easy to see that is an infinite complex noncrystallographic (and is irreducible if and only if is).
It appears that the construction above leads to any such group. More precisely, one has the following theorem (see also Section 1.5,2)):
Theorem. Let be an infinite irreducible complex Then is noncrystallographic if and only if it is equivalent to the complexification of an irreducible affine Weyl group.
Proof. | |
Proof is given in Section 3.4. |
The description of crystallographic groups is much more complicated. In order to give this description we need some preparations and extra notation.
The subgroup of translations in will be denoted by cf. Section 1.1. It is clear that and We usually identify with a subgroup of the additive group of by means of the map Clearly this subgroup is a lattice in
It will be proven in Section 3.1 that is a lattice of full rank (i.e. of rank and is a finite group (hence, is a finite irreducible complex linear see 1.4). Therefore, to describe one needs to point out a group from the Shephard and Todd list (i.e. from the theorem in 1.6), a lattice of rank and the way and are "glued" together. This is done below as follows:
1) Lin is given by its graph as in Section 1.6.
2) is described explicitly by linear combinations of vectors that generate Here is a fixed generating system of reflections of which is related to the graph of given in 1) as described in 1.6. To point out the vectors explicitly, we assume that is a subspace of a standard hermitian infinitedimensional coordinate space i.e. the space, whose elements are the sequences with only a finite number of nonzero elements and a scalar product defined by the formula The vectors are given by their, coordinates on a standard basis of where
3) The problem how to describe the "glueing" of and comes down to the determination of an extension of by Therefore it is done by means of cohomology. Let us show how it can be done.
Let be a subgroup of and write Choose a point Take and let be such that We have It is easy to see that the map is well defined and is in fact a i.e. (here acts on in the natural way).
Vice versa, if is an arbitrary let us consider an arbitrary map such that Then the set is a subgroup of with and
If we replace by an other point then (see 1.1). Therefore we have a bijection between the set of classes of subgroups of with and the group
However we have to consider subgroups of up to equivalence, i.e. up to (and not just up to This can be done as follows by means of an extra relation on Let If and is a resp. then it is easy to check that the map given by the formula is again a resp. (here acts on in the natural way). Therefore we have an action of on (clearly, by means of automorphisms).
Let be such that We want to calculate the cocycle that corresponds to Changing to where we can assume that Let and be such that Then Therefore the cocycle corresponding to is where is the cocycle corresponding to
We see now that there is a bijection between the set of classes of equivalent subgroups with and the set of in
With all these facts in mind, we determine the extension (of by by pointing out a which represents the corresponding element of (in fact, the whole in In order to do so, we need only give the values of this on the elements of a generating system of reflections of Technically it is more convenient to realize it as follows.
Let be a free group with generators We have an epimorphism The kernel of is the subgroup of "relations" of This epimorphism leads in a natural way to an action of on A of with values in is given by its values on the generators and these values may be arbitrary (because is free). It is easy to see that the formula defines a of with values in iff for every It is also clear that every of with values in is obtained in such a way.
We shall give the extension (of by by writing down the vectors
We are now ready to formulate the results of the classification of infinite irreducible crystallographic
Denote by the finite linear irreducible which has the number in the list of Shephard and Todd (i.e. in the first column of Table 1. This in spite of the slight confusion with Cohen's notation
First of all, there is an analogue of the theorem of Section 1.5.
Theorem. Let be an irreducible finite Then the following properties are equivalent:
a) | There exists a nonzero lattice in |
b) | There exists a lattice of rank in |
c) | where is an infinite crystallographic |
d) | The ring with unity, generated over by all cyclic products of a graph of lies in the ring of algebraic integers of a purely imaginary quadratic extension of |
e) | is defined over a purely imaginary quadratic extension of |
f) | is one of the groups: |
Proof. | |
Proof is given in Section 4.6. |
Now we shall describe the crystallographic groups themselves.
This list is given in the following theorem (we use the notation: if and if - this is the "modular strip"; for arbitrary
Theorem. The following list is the complete list of irreducible infinite crystallographic complex (considered up to equivalence).
The proof is given in the subsequent chapters.
Table 2 | |||||
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The irreducible infinite crystallographic complex | |||||
Notation of | cocycle | ||||
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Theorem. The following list is the complete list of groups and from Table 2 which are equivalent:
Table 3 | ||
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Pairs of equivalent irreducible infinite crystallographic complex | ||
condition | ||
-- | ||
-- | ||
-- | ||
-- | ||
-- | ||
Proof of this theorem is rather technical and will not be given here.
As we have seen in Section 1.5, if then the structure of an infinite irreducible as an extension of by is very simple: it is always a semidirect product. The situation is more complicated when because there exist infinite irreducible complex crystallographic which are not semidirect products of and
Theorem. The groups from Table 2 which are not semidirect products of and are
Theorem. Let be a finite irreducible and let be a lattice. Assume that there exists a crystallographic with Then the set of those elements of which correspond to such subgroups is in fact a subgroup of and the order of this subgroup is
As we have seen in Section 1.5, if then the group for an infinite irreducible is defined over If then for an infinite irreducible crystallographic is defined over a certain purely imaginary quadratic extension of see the theorem in Section 2.5. We can describe this extension precisely.
Theorem. Let be a finite irreducible complex Then the ring with unity generated over by the set of all cyclic products related to an arbitrary fixed generating system of reflections of coincides with the ring generated over by the set of traces of all elements of The ring is the minimal ring of definition of This ring is equal to iff is the complexification of the Weyl group of an irreducible root system.
Proof is given in the Section 4.6.
It is easily seen from Table 1 and the theorem above that for the groups where is an infinite irreducible crystallographic one has the following table:
Table 4 | |||||||
Linear parts of irreducible infinite crystallographic complex | |||||||
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fraction field of |
a) In contrast to the real case, there exist families of inequivalent irreducible complex infinite crystallographic with a fixed linear part (i.e. the groups with a fixed linear part may have moduli). We shall see below that an irreducible crystallographic with has moduli iff i.e. iff is the complexification of the Weyl group of an irreducible root system.
b) It follows from Table 4 (and from a known result in algebraic number theory) that the ring where is an infinite irreducible crystallographic is always a unique factorisation domain. It would be interesting to have an a priori proof of this fact.
c) If then it is known (and was a priori proved in 1948 - 51 by Cheval ley and Harish-Chandra) that there exists a bijective correspondence between the set of classes of equivalent infinite (hence crystallographic) affine Weyl groups) and the set of classes of isomorphic complex semisimple Lie algrebras.
Question: is it possible to attach to an infinite complex crystallographic a sort of "global object" (like a semisimple Lie algebra in the real case) in a such way that the correspondence between these and "global objects" will be bijective? We do not know whether such an object exists or not. It is funny that we can calculate (see 4.4) the group which, by analogy with the real case, might be "the center" of this hypothetical object.