Representation theory of SU(2)


In the study of the representation theory of Lie groups, the study of representations of SU is fundamental to the study of representations of semisimple Lie groups. It is the first case of a Lie group that is both a compact group and a non-abelian group. The first condition implies the representation theory is discrete: representations are direct sums of a collection of basic irreducible representations. The second means that there will be irreducible representations in dimensions greater than 1.
SU is the universal covering group of SO, and so its representation theory includes that of the latter, by dint of a surjective homomorphism to it. This underlies the significance of SU for the description of non-relativistic spin in theoretical physics; see [|below] for other physical and historical context.
As shown below, the finite-dimensional irreducible representations of SU are indexed by a non-negative integer and have dimension. In the physics literature, the representations are labeled by the quantity, where is then either an integer or a half-integer, and the dimension is.

Lie algebra representations

The representations of the group are found by considering representations of su, the Lie algebra of SU. Since the group SU is simply connected, every representation of its Lie algebra can be integrated to a group representation; we will give an explicit construction of the representations at the group level below. A reference for this material is Section 4.6 of.

Real and complexified Lie algebras

The real Lie algebra su has a basis given by
The matrices are a representation of the quaternions:
where is the conventional 2×2 identity matrix:
Consequently, the matrices commutator brackets satisfy
It is then convenient to pass to the complexified Lie algebra
As long as we are working with representations over this passage from real to complexified Lie algebra is harmless. The reason for passing to the complexification is that it allows us to construct a nice basis of a type that does not exist in the real Lie algebra su.
The complexified Lie algebra is spanned by three elements,, and, given by
or, explicitly,
These satisfy the commutation relations
Up to a factor of 2, the elements, and may be identified with the angular momentum operators,, and, respectively. The factor of 2 is a discrepancy between conventions in math and physics; we will attempt to mention both conventions in the results that follow.

Weights and the structure of the representation

In this setting, the eigenvalues for are referred to as the weights of the representation. The following elementary result is a key step in the analysis. Suppose that is an eigenvector for with eigenvalue, that is, that. Then
In other words, is either the zero vector or an eigenvector for with eigenvalue and is either zero or an eigenvector for with eigenvalue. Thus, the operator acts as a raising operator, increasing the weight by 2, while acts as a lowering operator.
Suppose now that is an irreducible, finite-dimensional representation of the complexified Lie algebra. Then can have only finitely many eigenvalues. In particular, there must be an eigenvalue with the property that is not an eigenvalue. Let be an eigenvector for with eigenvalue :
Then we must have
or else the above identity would tell us that is an eigenvector with eigenvalue.
Now define a "chain" of vectors by
A simple argument by induction then shows that
for all. Now, if is not the zero vector, it is an eigenvector for with eigenvalue. Since, again, has only finitely many eigenvectors, we conclude that must be zero for some .
Let be the last nonzero vector in the chain; that is, but. Then of course and by the above identity with, we have
Since is at least one and, we conclude that must be equal to the non-negative integer.
We thus obtain a chain of vectors such that acts as
and acts as
and acts as

Since the vectors are eigenvectors for with distinct eigenvalues, they must be linearly independent. Furthermore, the span of is clearly invariant under the action of the complexified Lie algebra. Since is assumed irreducible, this span must be all of. We thus obtain a complete description of what an irreducible representation must look like; that is, a basis for the space and a complete description of how the generators of the Lie algebra act. Conversely, for any we can construct a representation by simply using the above formulas and checking that the commutation relations hold. This representation can then be shown to be irreducible.
Conclusion: For each non-negative integer, there is a unique irreducible representation with highest weight. Each irreducible representation is equivalent to one of these. The representation with highest weight has dimension with weights, each having multiplicity one.

The Casimir element

We now introduce the Casimir element, given by
We can view as an element of the universal enveloping algebra or as an operator in each irreducible representation. Viewing as an operator on the representation with highest weight, we may easily compute that commutes with each. Thus, by Schur's lemma, acts as a scalar multiple of the identity for each. We can write in terms of the basis as follows:
which simplifies to
The eigenvalue of in the representation with highest weight can be computed by applying to the highest weight vector, which is annihilated by. Thus, we get
In the physics literature, the Casimir is normalized as. Labeling things in terms of, the eigenvalue of is then computed as

The group representations

Action on polynomials

Since SU is simply connected, a general result shows that every representation of its Lie algebra gives rise to a representation of SU itself. It is desirable, however, to give an explicit realization of the representations at the group level. The group representations can be realized on spaces of polynomials in two complex variables. That is, for each non-negative integer, we let denote the space of homogeneous polynomials of degree in two complex variables. Then the dimension of is. There is a natural action of SU on each, given by
The associated Lie algebra representation is simply the one described in the previous section.

The characters

The character of a representation is the function given by
Characters plays an important role in the representation theory of compact groups. The character is easily seen to be a class function, that is, invariant under conjugation.
In the SU case, the fact that the character is a class function means it is determined by its value on the maximal torus consisting of the diagonal matrices in SU. Since the irreducible representation with highest weight has weights, it is easy to see that the associated character satisfies
This expression is a finite geometric series that can be simplified to
This last expression is just the statement of the Weyl character formula for the SU case.
Actually, following Weyl's original analysis of the representation theory of compact groups, one can classify the representations entirely from the group perspective, without using Lie algebra representations at all. In this approach, the Weyl character formula plays an essential part in the classification, along with the Peter–Weyl theorem. The SU case of this story is described here.

Relation to the representations of SO(3)

Note that either all of the weights of the representation are even or all of the weights are odd. In physical terms, this distinction is important: The representations with even weights correspond to ordinary representations of the rotation group SO. By contrast, the representations with odd weights correspond to double-valued representation of SO, also known as projective representations.
In the physics conventions, being even corresponds to being an integer while being odd corresponds to being a half-integer. These two cases are described as integer spin and half-integer spin, respectively. The representations with odd, positive values of are faithful representations of SU, while the representations of SU with non-negative, even are not faithful.

Another approach

See under the example for Borel–Weil–Bott theorem.

Most important irreducible representations and their applications

Representations of SU describe non-relativistic spin, due to being a double covering of the rotation group of Euclidean 3-space. Relativistic spin is described by the representation theory of SL2, a supergroup of SU, which in a similar way covers SO+, the relativistic version of the rotation group. SU symmetry also supports concepts of isobaric spin and weak isospin, collectively known as isospin.
The representation with is the 2 representation, the fundamental representation of SU. When an element of SU is written as a complex matrix, it is simply a multiplication of column 2-vectors. It is known in physics as the spin-½ and, historically, as the multiplication of quaternions. This representation can also be viewed as a double-valued projective representation of the rotation group SO.
The representation with is the 3 representation, the adjoint representation. It describes 3-d rotations, the standard representation of SO, so real numbers are sufficient for it. Physicists use it for the description of massive spin-1 particles, such as vector mesons, but its importance for spin theory is much higher because it anchors spin states to the geometry of the physical 3-space.
This representation emerged simultaneously with the 2 when William Rowan Hamilton introduced versors, his term for elements of SU. Note that Hamilton did not use standard group theory terminology since his work preceded Lie group developments.
The representation is used in particle physics for certain baryons, such as the Δ.