Common matrix rep of de Sitter, Poincare and anti de Sitter Lie algebra elements

171 Views Asked by At

My question is straightforward (and perhaps also dumb). I'm currently studying reductive Cartan geometries and I'm looking for a common generic matrix representation of $\mathfrak{so}(4,1)$, $\mathfrak{iso}(3,1)$ and $\mathfrak{so}(3,2)$ elements, so I can also show the splitting $\mathfrak g=\mathfrak h\oplus\mathfrak{g/h}$ in this ugly (matrix) way. The Lie algebra $\mathfrak g$ is either de Sitter, Poincare or anti de Sitter algebra, $\mathfrak h$ is the Lie algebra of the stabiliser Lie subgroup of G, H, while $\mathfrak p=\mathfrak{g/h}$ is its complement.

The reason behind this search for a common matrix rep for the above Lie algebras is that somehow I need to introduce a dimensionless parameter $\epsilon$, which takes values (1,0,-1) according to the choice of $\mathfrak g$ (de Sitter, Poincare, adS respectively). This parameter seems mandatory for defining the internal cosmological constant $\lambda$, but this is more or less a Physics issue, so I will not continue on that path here. I'm just trying to imagine how this 5x5 matrix rep should look like. I have seen such a rep here (bottom of pg. 142) but I'm not able to fully justify this expression. The author says that "in each case the Lie algebra is $\mathfrak{so}(V)$, where $V$ is a vector space with metric $(-1,+1,+1,+1,\epsilon)$". I'm assuming he is implying that $V$ is a normed vec space and this is the norm-induced metric, but still the matrix he is introducing remains a bit of a mystery to me. Could someone help me?