Group Theory (ebook)

Argumento de Group Theory (ebook)

"In Group Theory, we get a sense of the quest Cvitanović has been on, which makes the book much more fun to read than the average mathematics text. This book is intriguing, novel, and important."--John Baez, University of California, Riverside

"There has been an urgent need for an in-print and readily available version of Cvitanović's innovative and systematic approach to the group-theoretic calculations occurring in theoretical physics and beyond. Well-organized and well-written, this book is definitely an important and valuable contribution to its field."--Alan J. Macfarlane, Cambridge University

"[T]he narrative of the book is written in a relaxed and witty style. The book is intriguing as well as entertaining."--Jeb F. Willenbring, Mathematical Reviews

"I think that the book is a very interesting and thought provoking contribution to the literature on representations of compact Lie groups. It has many interesting original aspects that deserve to be known much better than they are."--Karl-Hermann Neeb, Journal of the Lie Theory

"More than just an innovative notation, this book offers a conceptually novel alternative path to a key mathematical result, the classification of finite-dimensional simple Lie algebras. . . . While this volume is an obvious resource for physics students, the traces of physics that remain in the work will elucidate for mathematics students how physics uses Lie groups as a tool."--D.V. Feldman, Choice

"This book has to be seen to be believed! The title, Group Theory, is nothing if not surprising, given that the material dealt with by Predrag Cvitanović in these roughly 250 pages requires a level of sophistication well beyond what is offered in the early stages of university algebra. In point of fact, the general theme of the book under review is Lie theory with representation theory in the foreground, and Cvitanović's revolutionary goal (e.g., 'birdtracks') and, for lack of a better word, the attendant combinatorics. . . . [F]or the right reader, which is to say, an R>0-linear combination of mathematician and physicist equipped with a zeal for novel combinatorics flavored diagram-gymnastics, this book will be a treat and a thrill, and its new and radical way to compute many things Lie is bound to make its mark."--Michael Berg, MAA Reviews0Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: A preview 5
Chapter 3: Invariants and reducibility 14
Chapter 4: Diagrammatic notation 27
Chapter 5: Recouplings 42
Chapter 6: Permutations 49
Chapter 7: Casimir operators 60
Chapter 8: Group integrals 76
Chapter 9: Unitary groups 82
Chapter 10: Orthogonal groups 118
Chapter 11: Spinors 132
Chapter 12: Symplectic groups 148
Chapter 13: Negative dimensions 151
Chapter 14: Spinors? symplectic sisters 155
Chapter 15: SU(n) family of invariance groups 162
Chapter 16: G2 family of invariance groups 170
Chapter 17: E8 family of invariance groups 180
Chapter 18: E6 family of invariance groups 190
Chapter 19: F4 family of invariance groups 210
Chapter 20: E7 family and its negative-dimensional cousins 218
Chapter 21: Exceptional magic 229
Epilogue 235
Appendix A.Recursive decomposition 237
Appendix B.Properties of Young projections 239
H. Elvang and P. Cvitanovi?c
B.1 Uniqueness of Young projection operators 239
B.2 Orthogonality 240
B.3 Normalization and completeness 240
B.4 Dimension formula 241
Bibliography 243
Index 259