The nilpotent variety of $W(1;n{)}_p$ is irreducible

Abstract

In the late 1980s, Premet conjectured that the nilpotent variety of any finite dimensional restricted Lie algebra over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p>0$ is irreducible. This conjecture remains open, but it is known to hold for a large class of simple restricted Lie algebras, e.g. for Lie algebras of connected reductive algebraic groups, and for Cartan series $W,S$ and $H$. In this paper, with the assumption that $p>3$, we confirm this conjecture for the minimal $p$-envelope $W(1;n{)}_p$ of the Zassenhaus algebra $W(1;n)$ for all $n\ge 2$.

18 pages, Lemma 3.1 in [v2] is deleted and a few mistakes are corrected