Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change.
In mathematics, a group is a set equipped with a binary operation which combines any two elements to form a third element in such a way that four conditions called group axioms are satisfied, namely closure, associativity, identity and invertibility. One of the most familiar examples of a group is the set of integers together with the addition operation, but groups are encountered in numerous areas within and outside mathematics, and help focusing on essential structural aspects, by detaching them from the concrete nature of the subject of the study.
Representation theory is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract algebraic structures by representing their elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and studies modules over these abstract algebraic structures. In essence, a representation makes an abstract algebraic object more concrete by describing its elements by matrices and the algebraic operations in terms of matrix addition and matrix multiplication. The algebraic objects amenable to such a description include groups, associative algebras and Lie algebras. The most prominent of these is the representation theory of groups, in which elements of a group are represented by invertible matrices in such a way that the group operation is matrix multiplication.
Π is also a representation, as one may check explicitly.
If g is a realLie algebra and π is a representation of it over the vector space V, then the conjugate representation π is defined over the conjugate vector space V as follows:
In mathematics, a real number is a value of a continuous quantity that can represent a distance along a line. The adjective real in this context was introduced in the 17th century by René Descartes, who distinguished between real and imaginary roots of polynomials. The real numbers include all the rational numbers, such as the integer −5 and the fraction 4/3, and all the irrational numbers, such as √2. Included within the irrationals are the transcendental numbers, such as π (3.14159265...). In addition to measuring distance, real numbers can be used to measure quantities such as time, mass, energy, velocity, and many more.
In mathematics, a Lie algebra is a vector space together with a non-associative, alternating bilinear map , called the Lie bracket, satisfying the Jacobi identity.
π is also a representation, as one may check explicitly.
If two real Lie algebras have the same complexification, and we have a complex representation of the complexified Lie algebra, their conjugate representations are still going to be different. See spinor for some examples associated with spinor representations of the spin groupsSpin(p + q) and Spin(p, q).
In mathematics, the complexification of a vector space V over the field of real numbers yields a vector space VC over the complex number field, obtained by formally extending the scaling of vectors by real numbers to include their scaling ("multiplication") by complex numbers. Any basis for V may also serve as a basis for VC over the complex numbers.
In geometry and physics, spinors are elements of a (complex) vector space that can be associated with Euclidean space. Like geometric vectors and more general tensors, spinors transform linearly when the Euclidean space is subjected to a slight (infinitesimal) rotation. However, when a sequence of such small rotations is composed (integrated) to form an overall final rotation, the resulting spinor transformation depends on which sequence of small rotations was used: unlike vectors and tensors, a spinor transforms to its negative when the space is rotated through a complete turn from 0° to 360°. This property characterizes spinors. It is also possible to associate a substantially similar notion of spinor to Minkowski space in which case the Lorentz transformations of special relativity play the role of rotations. Spinors were introduced in geometry by Élie Cartan in 1913. In the 1920s physicists discovered that spinors are essential to describe the intrinsic angular momentum, or "spin", of the electron and other subatomic particles.
In mathematics the spin group Spin(n) is the double cover of the special orthogonal group SO(n) = SO(n, R), such that there exists a short exact sequence of Lie groups
If is a *-Lie algebra (a complex Lie algebra with a * operation which is compatible with the Lie bracket),
π(X) is the conjugate of −π(X) for all X in g
For a unitary representation, the dual representation and the conjugate representation coincide.
In mathematics, a unitary representation of a group G is a linear representation π of G on a complex Hilbert space V such that π(g) is a unitary operator for every g ∈ G. The general theory is well-developed in case G is a locally compact (Hausdorff) topological group and the representations are strongly continuous.
↑ This is the mathematicians' convention. Physicists use a different convention where the Lie bracket of two real vectors is an imaginary vector. In the physicist's convention, insert a minus in the definition.
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In quantum mechanics, bra–ket notation is a standard notation for describing quantum states. It can also be used to denote abstract vectors and linear functionals in mathematics. The notation uses angle brackets and a vertical bar, to denote the scalar product of vectors or the action of a linear functional on a vector in a complex vector space.
The scalar product or action is written as
In mathematics, a Clifford algebra is an algebra generated by a vector space with a quadratic form, and is a unital associative algebra. As K-algebras, they generalize the real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions and several other hypercomplex number systems. The theory of Clifford algebras is intimately connected with the theory of quadratic forms and orthogonal transformations. Clifford algebras have important applications in a variety of fields including geometry, theoretical physics and digital image processing. They are named after the English mathematician William Kingdon Clifford.
In mathematics, the orthogonal group in dimension n, denoted O(n), is the group of distance-preserving transformations of a Euclidean space of dimension n that preserve a fixed point, where the group operation is given by composing transformations. Equivalently, it is the group of n×n orthogonal matrices, where the group operation is given by matrix multiplication; an orthogonal matrix is a real matrix whose inverse equals its transpose.
In mathematics and theoretical physics, a representation of a Lie group is a linear action of a Lie group on a vector space. Equivalently, a representation is a smooth homomorphism of the group into the group of invertible operators on the vector space. Representations play an important role in the study of continuous symmetry. A great deal is known about such representations, a basic tool in their study being the use of the corresponding 'infinitesimal' representations of Lie algebras.
In the mathematical field of representation theory, a Lie algebra representation or representation of a Lie algebra is a way of writing a Lie algebra as a set of matrices in such a way that the Lie bracket is given by the commutator. In the language of physics, one looks for a vector space
together with a collection of operators on
satisfying some fixed set of commutation relations, such as the relations satisfied by the angular momentum operators.
In mathematical field of representation theory, a quaternionic representation is a representation on a complex vector space V with an invariant quaternionic structure, i.e., an antilinear equivariant map
In the mathematical field of representation theory a real representation is usually a representation on a real vector space U, but it can also mean a representation on a complex vector space V with an invariant real structure, i.e., an antilinear equivariant map
In mathematics, and especially the discipline of representation theory, the Schur indicator, named after Issai Schur, or Frobenius–Schur indicator describes what invariant bilinear forms a given irreducible representation of a compact group on a complex vector space has. It can be used to classify the irreducible representations of compact groups on real vector spaces.
In theoretical physics, a super-Poincaré algebra is an extension of the Poincaré algebra to incorporate supersymmetry, a relation between bosons and fermions. They are examples of supersymmetry algebras, and are Lie superalgebras. Thus a super-Poincaré algebra is a Z2-graded vector space with a graded Lie bracket such that the even part is a Lie algebra containing the Poincaré algebra, and the odd part is built from spinors on which there is an anticommutation relation with values in the even part.
In the study of the representation theory of Lie groups, the study of representations of SU(2) is fundamental to the study of representations of semisimple Lie groups. It is the first case of a Lie group that is both a compact group and a non-abelian group. The first condition implies the representation theory is discrete: representations are direct sums of a collection of basic irreducible representations. The second means that there will be irreducible representations in dimensions greater than 1.
In mathematics, if G is a group and ρ is a linear representation of it on the vector space V, then the dual representationρ* is defined over the dual vector space V* as follows:
The Lorentz group is a Lie group of symmetries of the spacetime of special relativity. This group can be realized as a collection of matrices, linear transformations, or unitary operators on some Hilbert space; it has a variety of representations. In any relativistically invariant physical theory, these representations must enter in some fashion; physics itself must be made out of them. Indeed, special relativity together with quantum mechanics are the two physical theories that are most thoroughly established, and the conjunction of these two theories is the study of the infinite-dimensional unitary representations of the Lorentz group. These have both historical importance in mainstream physics, as well as connections to more speculative present-day theories.
In mathematics, Tannaka–Krein duality theory concerns the interaction of a compact topological group and its category of linear representations. It is a natural extension of Pontryagin duality, between compact and discrete commutative topological groups, to groups that are compact but noncommutative. The theory is named for two men, the Soviet mathematician Mark Grigorievich Krein, and the Japanese Tadao Tannaka. In contrast to the case of commutative groups considered by Lev Pontryagin, the notion dual to a noncommutative compact group is not a group, but a category of representations Π(G) with some additional structure, formed by the finite-dimensional representations of G.
In mathematics, the spin representations are particular projective representations of the orthogonal or special orthogonal groups in arbitrary dimension and signature. More precisely, they are representations of the spin groups, which are double covers of the special orthogonal groups. They are usually studied over the real or complex numbers, but they can be defined over other fields.
In mathematics, admissible representations are a well-behaved class of representations used in the representation theory of reductive Lie groups and locally compact totally disconnected groups. They were introduced by Harish-Chandra.
In mathematics, the structure constants or structure coefficients of an algebra over a field are used to explicitly specify the product of two basis vectors in the algebra as a linear combination. Given the structure constants, the resulting product is bilinear and can be uniquely extended to all vectors in the vector space, thus uniquely determining the product for the algebra.
This is a glossary of representation theory in mathematics.
![Spin group Lie group in theoretical physics, predicting properties of [[spin (physics)|spin]]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Cyclic_group.svg/320px-Cyclic_group.svg.png)
