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In mathematics, the unitary group of degree n, denoted U(n), is the group of n × n unitary matrices, with the group operation of matrix multiplication. The unitary group is a subgroup of the general linear group GL(n, C). Hyperorthogonal group is an archaic name for the unitary group, especially over finite fields.
Contents
- Properties
- Topology
- 2 out of 3 property
- Special unitary and projective unitary groups
- G structure almost Hermitian
- Generalizations
- Indefinite forms
- Finite fields
- Degree 2 separable algebras
- Algebraic groups
- Unitary group of a quadratic module
- Polynomial invariants
- Classifying space
- References
In the simple case n = 1, the group U(1) corresponds to the circle group, consisting of all complex numbers with absolute value 1 under multiplication. All the unitary groups contain copies of this group.
The unitary group U(n) is a real Lie group of dimension n2. The Lie algebra of U(n) consists of n × n skew-Hermitian matrices, with the Lie bracket given by the commutator.
The general unitary group (also called the group of unitary similitudes) consists of all matrices A such that A∗A is a nonzero multiple of the identity matrix, and is just the product of the unitary group with the group of all positive multiples of the identity matrix.
Properties
Since the determinant of a unitary matrix is a complex number with norm
The kernel of this homomorphism is the set of unitary matrices with determinant
This short exact sequence splits so that
The unitary group
Topology
The unitary group U(n) is endowed with the relative topology as a subset of M(n, C), the set of all n × n complex matrices, which is itself homeomorphic to a 2n2-dimensional Euclidean space.
As a topological space, U(n) is both compact and connected. The compactness of U(n) follows from the Heine–Borel theorem and the fact that it is a closed and bounded subset of M(n, C). To show that U(n) is connected, recall that any unitary matrix A can be diagonalized by another unitary matrix S. Any diagonal unitary matrix must have complex numbers of absolute value 1 on the main diagonal. We can therefore write
A path in U(n) from the identity to A is then given by
The unitary group is not simply connected; the fundamental group of U(n) is infinite cyclic for all n:
To see this, note that the above splitting of U(n) as a semidirect product of SU(n) and U(1) induces a topological product structure on U(n), so that
Now the first unitary group U(1) is topologically a circle, which is well known to have a fundamental group isomorphic to Z, and the inclusion map U(n) → U(n + 1) is an isomorphism on π1. (It has quotient the Stiefel manifold.)
The determinant map det: U(n) → U(1) induces an isomorphism of fundamental groups, with the splitting U(1) → U(n) inducing the inverse.
The Weyl group of U(n) is the symmetric group Sn, acting on the diagonal torus by permuting the entries:
2-out-of-3 property
The unitary group is the 3-fold intersection of the orthogonal, symplectic, and complex groups:
Thus a unitary structure can be seen as an orthogonal structure, a complex structure, and a symplectic structure, which are required to be compatible (meaning that one uses the same J in the complex structure and the symplectic form, and that this J is orthogonal; writing all the groups as matrix groups fixes a J (which is orthogonal) and ensures compatibility).
In fact, it is the intersection of any two of these three; thus a compatible orthogonal and complex structure induce a symplectic structure, and so forth.
At the level of equations, this can be seen as follows:
Any two of these equations implies the third.
At the level of forms, this can be seen by decomposing a Hermitian form into its real and imaginary parts: the real part is symmetric (orthogonal), and the imaginary part is skew-symmetric (symplectic)—and these are related by the complex structure (which is the compatibility). On an almost Kähler manifold, one can write this decomposition as h = g + iω, where h is the Hermitian form, g is the Riemannian metric, i is the almost complex structure, and ω is the almost symplectic structure.
From the point of view of Lie groups, this can partly be explained as follows: O(2n) is the maximal compact subgroup of GL(2n, R), and U(n) is the maximal compact subgroup of both GL(n, C) and Sp(2n). Thus the intersection O(2n) ∩ GL(n, C) or O(2n) ∩ Sp(2n) is the maximal compact subgroup of both of these, so U(n). From this perspective, what is unexpected is the intersection GL(n, C) ∩ Sp(2n) = U(n).
Special unitary and projective unitary groups
Just as the orthogonal group O(n) has the special orthogonal group SO(n) as subgroup and the projective orthogonal group PO(n) as quotient, and the projective special orthogonal group PSO(n) as subquotient, the unitary group U(n) has associated to it the special unitary group SU(n), the projective unitary group PU(n), and the projective special unitary group PSU(n). These are related as by the commutative diagram at right; notably, both projective groups are equal: PSU(n) = PU(n).
The above is for the classical unitary group (over the complex numbers) – for unitary groups over finite fields, one similarly obtains special unitary and projective unitary groups, but in general
G-structure: almost Hermitian
In the language of G-structures, a manifold with a U(n)-structure is an almost Hermitian manifold.
Generalizations
From the point of view of Lie theory, the classical unitary group is a real form of the Steinberg group
This can be generalized in a number of ways:
Indefinite forms
Analogous to the indefinite orthogonal groups, one can define an indefinite unitary group, by considering the transforms that preserve a given Hermitian form, not necessarily positive definite (but generally taken to be non-degenerate). Here one is working with a vector space over the complex numbers.
Given a Hermitian form Ψ on a complex vector space V, the unitary group U(Ψ) is the group of transforms that preserve the form: the transform M such that Ψ(Mv, Mw) = Ψ(v, w) for all v, w ∈ V. In terms of matrices, representing the form by a matrix denoted Φ, this says that M∗ΦM = Φ.
Just as for symmetric forms over the reals, Hermitian forms are determined by signature, and are all unitarily congruent to a diagonal form with p entries of 1 on the diagonal and q entries of −1. The non-degenerate assumption is equivalent to p + q = n. In a standard basis, this is represented as a quadratic form as:
and as a symmetric form as:
The resulting group is denoted U(p,q).
Finite fields
Over the finite field with q = pr elements, Fq, there is a unique quadratic extension field, Fq2, with order 2 automorphism
where
Thus one can define a (unique) unitary group of dimension n for the extension Fq2/Fq, denoted either as U(n, q) or U(n, q2) depending on the author. The subgroup of the unitary group consisting of matrices of determinant 1 is called the special unitary group and denoted SU(n, q) or SU(n, q2). For convenience, this article will use the U(n, q2) convention. The center of U(n, q2) has order q + 1 and consists of the scalar matrices that are unitary, that is those matrices cIV with
Degree-2 separable algebras
More generally, given a field k and a degree-2 separable k-algebra K (which may be a field extension but need not be), one can define unitary groups with respect to this extension.
First, there is a unique k-automorphism of K
Algebraic groups
The equations defining a unitary group are polynomial equations over k (but not over K): for the standard form Φ = I, the equations are given in matrices as A∗A = I, where
For the field extension C/R and the standard (positive definite) Hermitian form, these yield an algebraic group with real and complex points given by:
In fact, the unitary group is a linear algebraic group.
Unitary group of a quadratic module
The unitary group of a quadratic module is a generalisation of the linear algebraic group U just defined, which incorporates as special cases many different classical algebraic groups. The definition goes back to Anthony Bak's thesis.
To define it, one has to define quadratic modules first:
Let R be a ring with anti-automorphism J,
Let Λ ⊆ R be an additive subgroup of R, then Λ is called form parameter if
Let M be an R-module and f a J-sesquilinear form on M (i.e.
To any quadratic module (M, h, q) defined by a J-sesquilinear form f on M over a form ring (R, Λ) one can associate the unitary group
The special case where Λ = Λmax, with J any non-trivial involution (i.e.
Polynomial invariants
The unitary groups are the automorphisms of two polynomials in real non-commutative variables:
These are easily seen to be the real and imaginary parts of the complex form
Classifying space
The classifying space for U(n) is described in the article classifying space for U(n).