Cartan subalgebras of root-reductive Lie algebras

Root-reductive Lie algebras are direct limits of finite-dimensional reductive Lie algebras under injections which preserve the root spaces. It is known that a root-reductive Lie algebra is a split extension of an abelian Lie algebra by a direct sum of copies of finite-dimensional simple Lie algebras as well as copies of the three simple infinite-dimensional root-reductive Lie algebras sl_infty, so_infty, and sp_infty. As part of a structure theory program for root-reductive Lie algebras, Cartan subalgebras of the Lie algebra gl_infty were introduced and studied in a paper of Neeb and Penkov. In the present paper we refine and extend the results of [N-P] to the case of a general root-reductive Lie algebra g. We prove that the Cartan subalgebras of g are the centralizers of maximal toral subalgebras and that they are nilpotent and self-normalizing. We also give an explicit description of all Cartan subalgebras of the simple Lie algebras sl_infty, so_infty, and sp_infty. We conclude the paper with a characterization of the set of conjugacy classes of Cartan subalgebras of the Lie algebras gl_infty, sl_infty, so_infty, and sp_infty with respect to the group of automorphisms of the natural representation which preserve the Lie algebra.