The root system and the core of an extended affine Lie algebra

An extended affine Lie algebra (EALA) is a complex Lie algebra which has an invariant nondegenerate form and a finite dimensional abelian ad-diagonalizable subalgebra which satisfies certain natural axioms. These Lie algebras were first introduced by Hoegh-Krohn and Torresani in 1990. As examples, finite dimensional simple Lie algebras, affine Kac-Moody Lie algebras and toroidal Lie algebras are EALA's. There are many other examples which have been constructed in the last few years. Given an EALA L, one can associate to L two basic objects: the root system R of L and the Lie algebra K, where K is the quotient of the core of L by its centre. In this paper, we give a complete description of R and K for EALA's of non-simply laced reduced type. The methods include a study of the graded associative, alternative and Jordan algebras which serve as coordinate algebras for the Lie algebra K.


B.N. Allison <bruce.allison@ualberta.ca>

Y. Gao <gao-yun@math.yale.edu>