1. Introduction
One of the basic problems in representation theory is to find the decomposition of a tensor product between two irreducible representations. In fact, the study of tensor product decompositions plays an important role in quantum mechanics and in string theory [
1,
2], and it has attracted much attention from combinatorial representation theory [
3]. In addition, recent studies reveal that tensor product decompositions are also closely related to the representation theory of Virasoro algebra and
W-algebras [
4,
5,
6].
In [
6], the authors extensively study decompositions of tensor products between integrable representations over affine Lie algebras. They also investigate relationships among tensor products, branching functions and Virasoro algebra through integrable representations over affine Lie algebras.
In the present paper we shall follow the methodology appearing in [
6]. However, we will focus on admissible representations of affine Lie algebras. Admissible representations are not generally integrable over affine Lie algebras, but integrable with respect to a subroot system of the root system attached to a given affine Lie algebra. Kac and Wakimoto showed that admissible representations satisfy several nice properties such as Weyl-Kac type character formula and modular invariance [
5,
7]. In their subsequent works, they also established connections between admissible representations of affine Lie algebras and the representation theory of
W-algebras [
4,
8]. In addition, Kac and Wakimoto expressed in ([
9], Theorem 3.1) the branching functions arising from the tensor product decompositions between principal admissible and integrable representations as the
q-series involving the associated dominant integral weights and string functions.
One of the main results of this paper is the explicit calculations of the branching functions appearing in ([
9], Theorem 3.1). We are particularly interested in the calculations of the branching functions obtained from certain tensor product decompositions of level 2 integrable and principal admissible representations over
(see Theorem 4). We shall see that these branching functions connect the representation theory of affine Lie algebras with the representation theory of super-Virasoro algebras.
We usually apply the theory of modular functions for calculations of string functions [
10]. However, in the current work we shall not use the tools of modular functions for the calculations of the string functions appearing in ([
9], Theorem 3.1). Instead, we shall use both the invariance properties of string functions under the action of affine Weyl group and the character formula whose summation is taken over maximal weights (see Theorem 5). It seems like that this approach provides a simpler way for computations of the string functions in our cases.
We would like to point out that in ([
5], Corollary 3(c)) the authors expressed the branching functions in terms of theta functions. We shall show that our expressions for the branching functions appearing in Theorem 4 are actually same as those of ([
5], Corollary 3(c)) through the investigations of the characters of the minimal series representations of super-Virasoro algebras. Comparing our calculations of the branching functions over
with the characters of the minimal series representations of super-Virasoro algebras, we also present the tensor product decompositions between level 2 integrable and principal admissible representations in terms of the minimal series representations of super-Virasoro algebras (see Theorem 6). This generalizes the decomposition formula appearing in ([
6], Section 4.1(a)) to the case of principal admissible weights.
2. Preliminaries
Let
be a symmetrizable generalized Cartan matrix and
the Kac-Moody Lie algebra associated with
A. Let
be a Cartan subalgebra of
. Fix the set of simple roots
of
and simple coroots
of
, respectively. Assume that
and
satisfy the condition
. We denote by
the non-degenerate invariant symmetric bilinear form on
. Write
,
and
for the set of all roots, positive roots and negative roots of
, respectively. Put
and
. For each
, we define the fundamental reflection
of
by
The subgroup
W of
generated by all fundamental reflections is called the
Weyl group of
.
Among symmetrizable Kac-Moody Lie algebras, the most important Lie algebras are affine Lie algebras whose associated Cartan matrices are called
affine Cartan matrices. It is known that every affine Cartan matrix is a positive semidefinite of corank 1. Each affine Cartan matrix is in one-to-one correspondence with the affine Dynkin diagram of type
, where
or
G and
, 2 or 3. The number
r is called the
tier number (see [
11,
12] for details). Given an affine Cartan matrix
two
-tuples
and
of positive integers are uniquely determined by the conditions
,
where is the zero vector. We call (resp. ) the label (resp. colabel) of the affine matrix A. The corresponding positive integer (resp. ) is called the Coxeter number (resp. dual Coxeter number). Notice that the element satisfies for , and we call this element the central element. Through the non-degenerate bilinear form defined on , the central element K corresponds to in .
Suppose that
is the affine Lie algebra associated to an affine Cartan matrix
, and let
be a Cartan subalgebra of
. The Cartan subalgebra
is
-dimensional, and we can decompose
and
as follows:
where
and
.
The lattice
and
are called the
root lattice and
coroot lattice, respectively. Set
For an element
, we define
by
We call
the
translation operator. It is known that the Weyl group
W of the affine Lie algebra
is also given by
, where
and
For a non-twisted affine Lie algebra (i.e.,
), recall that
and
where
is the set of all roots of the finite-dimensional simple Lie algebra associated with the finite Cartan matrix
.
Set
An element in
P (reps.
) is called an
integral weight (resp. a
dominant integral weight). Let
be the dominant integral weight defined by
for
. The element
is called the
Weyl vector of
. It is sometimes convenient to choose the Weyl vector satisfying the additional condition
, and we get
in this case.
Define the fundamental weights
by
and
. Similarly, we define the fundamental coweights
by
and
. Let
and
be the restrictions of
and
to
and
, respectively. Put
and
, and let us introduce a lattice
Then, the group
is called the
extended affine Weyl group of
.
3. Branching functions for admissible weights
Let be the Kac-Moody Lie algebra associated to a symmetrizable generalized Cartan matrix A, and a Cartan subalgebra of . An element satisfying conditions
for all ,
-span of -span of
is called an
admissible weight. When
is an admissible weight, the corresponding irreducible highest weight
-module
is called an
admissible -module or
admissible representation. Write
Then, it is easy to see that
forms a subroot system of the coroot system
. We denote by
a base of
, and put
.
An admissible weight
is called a
principal admissible weight if
is isomorphic to
. In general, the level of a principal admissible weight is a rational number. In fact, it is known from [
7] that a rational number
is the level of principal admissible weights if and only if it satisfies
,
,
where is the tier number of the transposed generalized Cartan matrix and denotes the dual Coxeter number of .
Henceforth, we assume that is an affine Lie algebra with a simple coroot system .
Given
, put
and
. Define
. Then,
becomes a simple coroot system of
if
(see [
13], Lemma 3.2.1). Moreover, the following theorems are known.
Theorem 1. Let with , and . Assume that satisfies . Write for the set of all principal admissible weights λ of level m with . Then, we have Proof. See ([
7], Theorem 2.1) or ([
9], Proposition 1.5). □
Theorem 2. Let with , and . Let be the set of all principal admissible weights of level m (we use the same notation as the case of dominant integral weights). Then, , where y runs over .
Proof. See ([
9], Proposition 1.5). □
Let us now review branching functions and their connections with the Virasoro algebra.
Recall the Virasoro algebra is an infinite dimensional Lie algebra
with brackets
and
Let
be a finite dimensional simple Lie algebra, and
the non-twisted affine Lie algebra over
. Let
V be the highest weight
-module of level
m such that
. Define the operators
via
where
and
are bases of
satisfying
. It is well-known that
V becomes a
-module by letting
The Virasoro action (
2) satisfies the following properties:
Let
be a reductive subalgebra of
. Then,
is decomposed as
, where
is the center of
and each
is a simple Lie algebra. Assume that
and
where
(resp.
) is a Cartan subalgebra of
(resp.
) and
(resp.
) is the sum of the positive root spaces of
(resp.
). Consider the affinization
of
. Since
V is the highest weight
-module,
V is also the highest weight
-module. However, the action of the central element
on
V is somewhat complicated. We refer to ([
11], Chapter 12) for the details of the action of the central element
. Let
be the level of
V as a
-module, and write
for the standard bilinear form on
. Set
where
and
are bases of
satisfying
and
is the dual Coxeter number of
. Using (
1) and (
5), define
Due to (
3), it follows that
Applying the operator product expansions, we can verify that
is, in fact, a Virasoro field with the central charge
(see [
13,
14] for the details). We call the Virasoro field
the
coset Virasoro field.
In the remaining part of this section, we assume that
for a dominant integral weight
of level
m. Let
be a Cartan subalgebra of
, and
the positive part of
. For
, set
Due to (4) and (6),
is stable under the actions of
. So,
becomes a
-module. We call this module the
coset Virasoro module. Notice that
is decomposed as a
-module into
where
is the irreducible
-module with highest weight
and
is identified with
via the non-degenerate bilinear form on
. From (
7), we define a function
where the multiplicity is defined as in ([
6], Section 1.6). The function (
8) is called the
string function. Using the string function (
8), the decomposition (
7) yields the following formula for the character of
:
Let us now introduce the following numbers:
,
,
where is the Weyl vector associated with .
Then, we define the branching function as
for
. By the strange formula and (4), we see that the branching function also can be written as
(see [
11] (Chapter 12) for the strange formula).
Recall that the normalized character
is defined as
Introducing the coordinate
for
we obtain that
. So, the Formula (
9) can be rewritten as
4. Tensor Product Decompositions
In this section, we fix an affine Lie algebra
over a finite dimensional simple Lie algebra
. We also fix a Cartan subalgebra
of
. For
,
, let
and
be irreducible highest weight modules over
. We denote by
and
the representations of
on
and
, respectively. Put
and
. Assume that
,
and
. It follows from (
2) that the Virasoro algebra
acts on
and
. The corresponding Virasoro fields are
and
Notice that the Virasoro algebra
acts on
via the tensor product action
with the central charge
.
On the other hand, we may consider the whole tensor product
as the highest weight
-module. Applying (
2) to the highest weight
-module
, we get the associated Virasoro field
with the central charge
.
Using (
3), we have
Set
. According to ([
15], Proposition 10.3), the field
yields the coset Virasoro field on
with central charge
.
For
, we define
It follows from (
10) that the space
becomes a
-module via the coset Virasoro field
. Notice that
is decomposed as a
-module into
We obtain from (
11) a string function
Using (
11) and (
12), we get
If we define the normalized branching function by
then the Formula (
13) yields
Let
be a dominant integral weight and
a principal admissible weight of the affine Lie algebra
. Then, the branching function of the tensor product
can be expressed in terms of the string functions of
as follows.
Theorem 3. Let be any affine Lie algebra and . Let with and . Assume that Λ and are dominant integral weights of level m and , respectively. Write for the modified string function for , where is the string function defined with respect to the pair (i.e., in (8)). Then, for a principal admissible weight , the following formula holds:where Proof. See ([
9], Theorem 3.1). □
In the next section, we simply write for if no confusion seems likely to arise, and will calculate explicitly the branching functions for some specific cases.
5. Explicit Calculations of Branching Functions
Let and be the fundamental weights of , and a principal admissible weight of . In this section, we explicitly calculate the branching functions arising from the tensor product decompositions of and .
Let us write
for the simple root system of
. Then it is easy to check
for
. Let
, and choose a principal admissible weight
of level
m satisfying
for
(see Theorems 1 and 2).
Applying Theorem 3 to the tensor product representations
and
, we obtain
where
and
where
Similarly, if we apply Theorem 3 to the tensor product representation
then we have
where
For
and
, let us write
for some
and
. Then, we can rewrite
and
in (
16) as
and
Since
and
, we should have
.
Similarly, for
, we obtain
. From the condition
, we have the same condition
as the case of
. For this reason, we shall identify
with
in the following Theorem 4. The same argument yields that the condition
in (
18) is equivalent to the condition
in (
19).
Theorem 4. Let for , and let and .
Suppose thatandfor some and satisfying . Then, the branching functions in (16) and (17) are explicitly given byandwhere Assume thatandfor some and . Then, the branching function in (18) is explicitly given by
Proof. We first prove (
20) and (
21).
Recall that the Weyl group W of is given by
By (
15) and (
19), we have
and
So, we get
and
Notice from ([
11], (12.7.9)) that we have
for
,
,
and
. Since
, we see from (
25) that
and
Hence, in any case we obtain
for
. Since
u is even, we have
and
Since
and
, we obtain
or
. If
, then
and
. Thus, by (
23), (
24), (
25) and (
26) we get
and
Similarly, if
, then
and
. So, in this case we have
and
We now compute the exponent
of
q in (
16) and (
17).
Since
in assumption, we see that
and
It also follows from the assumption
that
Notice from (
31) and (
32) that
and
Thus, we obtain
Hence, if
, then we obtain from (
27), (
28), (
33) and (
34) that
If
then we also obtain from (
29), (
30), (
33) and (
34)
The Formula (
20) now follows.
Applying the same argument as above to the case of
, we obtain
and
Notice that we have
due to the outer automorphism of
.
Therefore, if
then we get from (
35), (
36), (
33), (
34) and (
37) that
Similarly, if
then we obtain that
The Formula (
21) now follows.
The proof is exactly the same as those of (
20) and (
21) except for calculations of the string function
. Recall from the assumption that
and
. Then, by (
23)–(
25) we obtain
and
The result now follows. □
It is immediate from Theorem 4 that the branching function of
for
is given by
In the following theorem, we explicitly calculate and in terms of the Dedekind eta function.
Theorem 5. and , where .
Proof. It follows from the Weyl-Kac character formula that
where
and
Calculating
for
, we obtain from (
38)
Similarly, we can evaluate
as follows:
Using (
39), (
40) and the Jacobi triple product identity, we have
Recall from ([
11], (12.7.1)) that
and
From (
42) and (
43), the coefficient of
in
should be equal to
Comparing (
44) with the coefficient of
in (
41), we obtain
By substituting
, we obtain from (
45)
By letting
, we get
and this implies
On the other hand, it is easy to check that
and
, and these yield that
and
. So, (
46) gives rise to
Thus,
Next, we compute .
Replacing all positive roots
by
, we obtain from the denominator identity that
Thus, it follows from the Jacobi triple identity that
On the other hand, we get from ([
11], (12.7.1)) that
Comparing the coefficients of
in (
48) and (
49), we have
Moreover, it is easy to check
which implies
.
The result now follows. □
6. Super-Virasoro algebras
In this section, we shall investigate relationships between our results on branching functions and the representation theory of super-Virasoro algebras. As by-products, we generalize the tensor product decomposition formulas ([
6], (4.1.2a) and (4.1.2b)) to the case of principal admissible weights.
Let us first review the theta functions associated to an affine Lie algebra and its Cartan subalgebra .
For
, the theta function
is defined as
where
is the root lattice of
. Using the coordinate
for the Cartan subalgebra
, we get
where
is the projection of
onto
.
In particular, if we take
for
then the corresponding theta function is
Evaluating (
50) at
, we have
For convenience, we shall simply write
for (
51) in the remaining part of this section.
Next, we review the super-Virasoro algebras . (For or , is called the Ramond and Neveu-Schwarz superalgebra, respectively.)
The super-Virasoro algebra is the complex superalgebra with a basis , and it satisfies commutation relations
,
,
,
,
,
where denotes an anti-commutator bracket between two odd elements.
Recall that every minimal series irreducible module of
corresponds to the pair of numbers
. Here,
is the central charge equals
, and
is the minimal eigenvalue of
equals
for
,
,
,
,
,
and
(we refer to ([
16], Theorem 5.2) for the details).
Write
for the minimal series module over
corresponding to
. According to [
17,
18], it follows that
where
By (
51), we see that
So, the normalized character of
is
where
.
Let
and
in (
52). Then, by Theorem 4, Theorem 5 and (
52), we obtain the following result.
Proposition 1. Let . Suppose that λ is a principal admissible weight of such that for . Then, the branching function (resp. ) of (resp. ) is the same as the normalized character (resp. ) of the Neveu-Schwarz (resp. Ramond) superalgebra.
It follows from
Section 4 that
and
where
and
are taken over
and
, respectively.
According to [
17] the coset Virasoro action introduced in
Section 4 can be extended to the action of super-Virasoro algebras, and (
53) and (
54) can be considered as decompositions of
-module. Thus, (
14) and Proposition 1 imply that
(resp.
) should be isomorphic to the minimal series module
(resp.
) as
-modules (resp.
-modules). Hence, we obtain the following theorem.
Theorem 6. Let m and λ be the same as Proposition 1. Then, we haveandwhere ν and are taken over and , respectively.