FRG: Collaborative Research: Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations: Unitary Representations

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project has two primary goals. The first is to solve the problem of the unitary dual: to describe the irreducible unitary representations of real reductive Lie groups. The primary tool is an algorithm to compute the unitary dual of any given group, which we are implementing inside the "atlas" software. We plan to use this information to prove results about the unitary dual, beginning with the unitarity of Arthur's unipotent representations. The second primary goal is to make information about representation theory of real groups accessible to non-specialists, via the software, a web site, public workshops, and other means. The atlas software is freely available on the atlas web site, and will continue to be maintained there indefinitely. The idea of using symmetry to study problems in mathematics and science dates back to Fourier's work on heat nearly two hundred years ago. In the hands of Hermann Weyl, Eugene Wigner, and Andre Weil, symmetry has come to play a central role in quantum mechanics and in number theory. Lie groups, named after the Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie, are the mathematical objects underlying symmetry. Representation theory studies all of the ways a given symmetry, or Lie group, can manifest itself. The problem of understanding all "unitary" representations (in which the symmetry operations preserve lengths) is one of the most important unsolved problems in the subject, and has potential applications in many areas; for example, it is an abstract version of the question, "what quantum mechanical systems can admit a certain kind of symmetry?"