English

Weyl's polarization theorem in positive characteristic

Representation Theory 2018-11-27 v2

Abstract

Let VV be an nn-dimensional algebraic representation over an algebraically closed field KK of a group GG. For m>0m > 0, we study the invariant rings K[Vm]GK[V^{ m}]^G for the diagonal action of GG on VmV^m. In characteristic zero, a theorem of Weyl tells us that we can obtain all the invariants in K[Vm]GK[V^m]^G by the process of polarization and restitution from K[Vn]GK[V^n]^G. In particular, this means that if K[Vn]GK[V^n]^G is generated in degree d\leq d, then so is K[Vm]GK[V^m]^G no matter how large mm is. There are several explicit counterexamples to Weyl's theorem in positive characteristic. However, when GG is a (connected) reductive affine group scheme over Z\mathbb{Z} and VV^* is a good GG-module, we show that Weyl's theorem holds in sufficiently large characteristic. As a special case, we consider the ring of invariants R(n,m)R(n,m) for the left-right action of SLn×SLn{\rm SL}_n \times {\rm SL}_n on mm-tuples of n×nn \times n matrices. In this case, we show that the invariants of degree n6\leq n^6 suffice to generate R(n,m)R(n,m) if the characteristic is larger than 2n6+n22n^6 + n^2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.03602,
  title  = {Weyl's polarization theorem in positive characteristic},
  author = {Harm Derksen and Visu Makam},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.03602},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

17 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:47:56.018Z