In the Mathematics field of Lie theory, a Dynkin diagram, named for Eugene Dynkin, is a type of graph with some edges doubled or tripled (drawn as a double or triple line). Dynkin diagrams arise in the classification of semisimple Lie algebras over algebraically closed fields, in the classification of and other finite reflection groups, and in other contexts. Various properties of the Dynkin diagram (such as whether it contains multiple edges, or its symmetries) correspond to important features of the associated Lie algebra.
The term "Dynkin diagram" can be ambiguous. In some cases, Dynkin diagrams are assumed to be directed graph, in which case they correspond to and semi-simple Lie algebras, while in other cases they are assumed to be undirected graph, in which case they correspond to Weyl groups. In this article, "Dynkin diagram" means directed Dynkin diagram, and undirected Dynkin diagrams will be explicitly so named.
Dropping the direction on the graph edges corresponds to replacing a root system by the finite reflection group it generates, the so-called Weyl group, and thus undirected Dynkin diagrams classify Weyl groups.
They have the following correspondence for the Lie algebras associated to classical groups over the complex numbers:
The central classification is that a simple Lie algebra has a root system, to which is associated an (oriented) Dynkin diagram; all three of these may be referred to as B n, for instance.
The unoriented Dynkin diagram is a form of Coxeter diagram, and corresponds to the Weyl group, which is the finite reflection group associated to the root system. Thus B n may refer to the unoriented diagram (a special kind of Coxeter diagram), the Weyl group (a concrete reflection group), or the abstract Coxeter group.
Although the Weyl group is abstractly isomorphic to the Coxeter group, a specific isomorphism depends on an ordered choice of simple roots. Likewise, while Dynkin diagram notation is standardized, Coxeter diagram and group notation is varied and sometimes agrees with Dynkin diagram notation and sometimes does not.
Lastly, sometimes associated objects are referred to by the same notation, though this cannot always be done regularly. Examples include:
The index (the n) equals to the number of nodes in the diagram, the number of simple roots in a basis, the dimension of the root lattice and span of the root system, the number of generators of the Coxeter group, and the rank of the Lie algebra. However, n does not equal the dimension of the defining module (a fundamental representation) of the Lie algebra – the index on the Dynkin diagram should not be confused with the index on the Lie algebra. For example, corresponds to which naturally acts on 9-dimensional space, but has rank 4 as a Lie algebra.
The simply laced Dynkin diagrams, those with no multiple edges (A, D, E) classify many further mathematical objects; see discussion at ADE classification.
In the root system, shown at right, the roots labeled and form a base. Since these two roots are at angle of 120 degrees (with a length ratio of 1), the Dynkin diagram consists of two vertices connected by a single edge: .
Dynkin diagrams differ from Coxeter diagrams of finite groups in two important respects:
The term "Dynkin diagram" at times refers to the directed graph, at times to the undirected graph. For precision, in this article "Dynkin diagram" will mean directed, and the underlying undirected graph will be called an "undirected Dynkin diagram". Then Dynkin diagrams and Coxeter diagrams may be related as follows:
The corresponding mathematical objects classified by the diagrams are:
There are natural maps down – from Dynkin diagrams to undirected Dynkin diagrams; respectively, from root systems to the associated Weyl groups – and right – from undirected Dynkin diagrams to Coxeter diagrams; respectively from Weyl groups to finite Coxeter groups.
The down map is onto (by definition) but not one-to-one, as the B n and C n diagrams map to the same undirected diagram, with the resulting Coxeter diagram and Weyl group thus sometimes denoted BC n.
The right map is simply an inclusion – undirected Dynkin diagrams are special cases of Coxeter diagrams, and Weyl groups are special cases of finite Coxeter groups – and is not onto, as not every Coxeter diagram is an undirected Dynkin diagram (the missed diagrams being H3, H4 and I2( p) for p = 5 p ≥ 7), and correspondingly not every finite Coxeter group is a Weyl group.
Trivially, one can start the families at or which are all then isomorphic as there is a unique empty diagram and a unique 1-node diagram. The other isomorphisms of connected Dynkin diagrams are:
These isomorphisms correspond to isomorphism of simple and semisimple Lie algebras, which also correspond to certain isomorphisms of Lie group forms of these. They also add context to the En family.
The diagrams that have non-trivial automorphisms are A n (), D n (), and E6. In all these cases except for D4, there is a single non-trivial automorphism (Out = C2, the cyclic group of order 2), while for D4, the automorphism group is the symmetric group on three letters ( S3, order 6) – this phenomenon is known as "triality". It happens that all these diagram automorphisms can be realized as Euclidean symmetries of how the diagrams are conventionally drawn in the plane, but this is just an artifact of how they are drawn, and not intrinsic structure.
For A n, the diagram automorphism is reversing the diagram, which is a line. The nodes of the diagram index the fundamental weights, which (for A n−1) are for , and the diagram automorphism corresponds to the duality Realized as the Lie algebra the outer automorphism can be expressed as negative transpose, , which is how the dual representation acts.
For D n, the diagram automorphism is switching the two nodes at the end of the Y, and corresponds to switching the two chiral spin representations. Realized as the Lie algebra the outer automorphism can be expressed as conjugation by a matrix in O(2 n) with determinant −1. When n = 3, one has so their automorphisms agree, while is disconnected, and the automorphism corresponds to switching the two nodes.
For D4, the fundamental representation is isomorphic to the two spin representations, and the resulting symmetric group on three letter ( S3, or alternatively the dihedral group of order 6, Dih3) corresponds both to automorphisms of the Lie algebra and automorphisms of the diagram.
The automorphism group of E6 corresponds to reversing the diagram, and can be expressed using .
Disconnected diagrams, which correspond to semisimple Lie algebras, may have automorphisms from exchanging components of the diagram.
In positive characteristic there are additional "diagram automorphisms" – roughly speaking, in characteristic p one is sometimes allowed to ignore the arrow on bonds of multiplicity p in the Dynkin diagram when taking diagram automorphisms. Thus in characteristic 2 there is an order 2 automorphism of and of F4, while in characteristic 3 there is an order 2 automorphism of G2. But doesn't apply in all circumstances: for example, such automorphisms need not arise as automorphisms of the corresponding algebraic group, but rather on the level of points valued in a finite field.
The Chevalley group construction of Lie groups in terms of their Dynkin diagram does not yield some of the classical groups, namely the unitary groups and the non-split orthogonal groups. The Steinberg groups construct the unitary groups 2A n, while the other orthogonal groups are constructed as 2D n, where in both cases this refers to combining a diagram automorphism with a field automorphism. This also yields additional exotic Lie groups 2E6 and 3D4, the latter only defined over fields with an order 3 automorphism.
The additional diagram automorphisms in positive characteristic yield the Suzuki–Ree groups, 2B2, 2F4, and 2G2.
The one condition on the automorphism for folding to be possible is that distinct nodes of the graph in the same orbit (under the automorphism) must not be connected by an edge; at the level of root systems, roots in the same orbit must be orthogonal. At the level of diagrams, this is necessary as otherwise the quotient diagram will have a loop, due to identifying two nodes but having an edge between them, and loops are not allowed in Dynkin diagrams.
The nodes and edges of the quotient ("folded") diagram are the orbits of nodes and edges of the original diagram; the edges are single unless two incident edges map to the same edge (notably at nodes of valence greater than 2) – a "branch point" of the map, in which case the weight is the number of incident edges, and the arrow points towards the node at which they are incident – "the branch point maps to the non-homogeneous point". For example, in D4 folding to G2, the edge in G2 points from the class of the 3 outer nodes (valence 1), to the class of the central node (valence 3).
The foldings of finite diagrams are:See for illustrations of these foldings and references.Note that Stekloshchik uses an arrow convention opposite to that of this article.
Similar foldings exist for affine diagrams, including:
The notion of foldings can also be applied more generally to – notably, one can generalize allowable quotients of Dynkin diagrams to Hn and I2( p). Geometrically this corresponds to projections of . Notably, any simply laced Dynkin diagram can be folded to I2( h), where h is the Coxeter number, which corresponds geometrically to projection to the Coxeter plane.
Folding can be applied to reduce questions about (semisimple) Lie algebras to questions about simply-laced ones, together with an automorphism, which may be simpler than treating multiply laced algebras directly; this can be done in constructing the semisimple Lie algebras, for instance. See Math Overflow: Folding by Automorphisms for further discussion.
A2 root system | G2 root system |
Some additional maps of diagrams have meaningful interpretations, as detailed below. However, not all maps of root systems arise as maps of diagrams.
For example, there are two inclusions of root systems of A2 in G2, either as the six long roots or the six short roots. However, the nodes in the G2 diagram correspond to one long root and one short root, while the nodes in the A2 diagram correspond to roots of equal length, and thus this map of root systems cannot be expressed as a map of the diagrams.
Some inclusions of root systems can be expressed as one diagram being an induced subgraph of another, meaning "a subset of the nodes, with all edges between them". This is because eliminating a node from a Dynkin diagram corresponds to removing a simple root from a root system, which yields a root system of rank one lower. By contrast, removing an edge (or changing the multiplicity of an edge) while leaving the nodes unchanged corresponds to changing the angles between roots, which cannot be done without changing the entire root system. Thus, one can meaningfully remove nodes, but not edges. Removing a node from a connected diagram may yield a connected diagram (simple Lie algebra), if the node is a leaf, or a disconnected diagram (semisimple but not simple Lie algebra), with either two or three components (the latter for D n and E n). At the level of Lie algebras, these inclusions correspond to sub-Lie algebras.
The maximal subgraphs are as follows; subgraphs related by a diagram automorphism are labeled "conjugate":
Finally, duality of diagrams corresponds to reversing the direction of arrows, if any: Bn and Cn are dual, while F4, and G2 are self-dual, as are the simply-laced ADE diagrams.
Undirected graphs had been used earlier by Coxeter (1934) to classify , where the nodes corresponded to simple reflections; the graphs were then used (with length information) by Witt (1941) in reference to root systems, with the nodes corresponding to simple roots, as they are used today. Why are the Dynkin diagrams E6, E7 and E8 always drawn the way they are drawn? Dynkin then used them in 1946 and 1947, acknowledging Coxeter and Witt in his 1947 paper.
Alternative convention include writing a number by the edge to indicate multiplicity (commonly used in Coxeter diagrams), darkening nodes to indicate root length, or using 120° angles on valence 2 nodes to make the nodes more distinct.
There are also conventions about numbering the nodes. The most common modern convention had developed by the 1960s and is illustrated in .
For rank 2, the Cartan matrix form is:
A multi-edged diagram corresponds to the nondiagonal Cartan matrix elements , with the number of edges drawn equal to , and an arrow pointing towards nonunity elements.
A generalized Cartan matrix is a square matrix such that:
The Cartan matrix determines whether the group is of finite type (if it is a positive-definite matrix, i.e. all eigenvalues are positive), of affine type (if it is not positive-definite but positive-semidefinite, i.e. all eigenvalues are non-negative), or of indefinite type. The indefinite type often is further subdivided, for example a Coxeter group is Lorentzian if it has one negative eigenvalue and all other eigenvalues are positive. Moreover, multiple sources refer to hyberbolic Coxeter groups, but there are several non-equivalent definitions for this term. In the discussion below, hyperbolic Coxeter groups are a special case of Lorentzian, satisfying an extra condition. For rank 2, all negative determinant Cartan matrices correspond to hyperbolic Coxeter group. But in general, most negative determinant matrices are neither hyperbolic nor Lorentzian.
Finite branches have , and affine branches (with a zero determinant) have .
+ Rank 2 Dynkin diagrams |
Note1: For hyperbolic groups, ( a12⋅ a21>4), the multiedge style is abandoned in favor of an explicit labeling on the edge. These are usually not applied to finite and affine graphs.Section 2.1 in
Note2: For undirected groups, are interchangeable. They are usually labeled by their order of symmetry, with order-3 implied with no label. Note3: Many multi-edged groups can be obtained from a higher ranked simply-laced group by applying a suitable folding operation. |
+ Finite Dynkin graphs with 1 to 9 nodes |
See Dynkin diagram generator for diagrams.
The set of extended affine Dynkin diagrams, with added nodes in green ( for and for ) | "Twisted" affine forms are named with (2) or (3) superscripts. (The subscript k always counts the number of yellow nodes in the graph, i.e. the total number of nodes minus 1.) |
Here are all of the Dynkin graphs for affine groups up to 10 nodes. Extended Dynkin graphs are given as the ~ families, the same as the finite graphs above, with one node added. Other directed-graph variations are given with a superscript value (2) or (3), representing foldings of higher order groups. These are categorized as Twisted affine diagrams.
+ Connected affine Dynkin graphs up to (2 to 10 nodes) (Grouped as undirected graphs) !Rank ! ! ! ! ! E / F / G |
+ Summary |
+ Compact hyperbolic graphs | |||
Linear graphs
| Cyclic graphs
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+Some example over-extended (hyperbolic) Dynkin diagrams |
+ Rank 2 extended series |
+ Rank 3 and 4 extended series |
+ Rank 5 and 6 extended series |
+ Some rank 7 and higher extended series |
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