Weak commutativity and nilpotency

Abstract

We continue the analysis of the weak commutativity construction for Lie algebras. This is the Lie algebra $\chi (\mathfrak{g})$ generated by two isomorphic copies $\mathfrak{g}$ and ${\mathfrak{g}}^{\psi }$ of a fixed Lie algebra, subject to the relations $[x,x^{\psi }]=0$ for all $x\in \mathfrak{g}$. In this article we study the ideal $L=L(\mathfrak{g})$ generated by $x-x^{\psi }$ for all $x\in \mathfrak{g}$. We obtain an (infinite) presentation for $L$ as a Lie algebra, and we show that in general it cannot be reduced to a finite one. With this in hand, we study the question of nilpotency. We show that if $\mathfrak{g}$ is nilpotent of class $c$, then $\chi (\mathfrak{g})$ is nilpotent of class at most $c+2$, and this bound can improved to $c+1$ if $\mathfrak{g}$ is $2$-generated or if $c$ is odd. We also obtain concrete descriptions of $L(\mathfrak{g})$ (and thus of $\chi (\mathfrak{g})$) if $\mathfrak{g}$ is free nilpotent of class $2$ or $3$. Finally, using methods of Gröbner-Shirshov bases we show that the abelian ideal $R(\mathfrak{g})=[\mathfrak{g},[L,{\mathfrak{g}}^{\psi }]]$ is infinite-dimensional if $\mathfrak{g}$ is free of rank at least $3$.

18 pages