Rigidity and Cohomology of Seaweed Lie Algebras

Abstract

Seaweed (biparabolic) subalgebras form a large and structurally rich class of subalgebras of simple Lie algebras. We determine their adjoint cohomology. If $\mathfrak{s}$ is an indecomposable seaweed subalgebra of a complex simple Lie algebra, then \[ H^\ast(\mathfrak{s},\mathfrak{s})=0, \] and hence $\mathfrak{s}$ is absolutely rigid. If $\mathfrak{s}$ is decomposable, then the Coll--Gerstenhaber decomposition for Lie semidirect products gives, for each $n\ge 0$, a canonical description of $H^n(\mathfrak{s},\mathfrak{s})$ in terms of exterior powers of $\mathcal{Z}(\mathfrak{s}{)}^{\ast }$ and the zero-weight cohomology of $\mathfrak{s}/\mathcal{Z}(\mathfrak{s})$. In particular, the center is the unique source of nontrivial adjoint cohomology. These results identify indecomposability as the precise condition for cohomological rigidity and give a uniform description of adjoint cohomology for seaweed Lie algebras.

13 pages, 2 figures