Killing Form - Definition

Definition

Consider a Lie algebra g over a field K. Every element x of g defines the adjoint endomorphism ad(x) (also written as adx) of g with the help of the Lie bracket, as

ad(x)(y) = .

Now, supposing g is of finite dimension, the trace of the composition of two such endomorphisms defines a symmetric bilinear form

B(x, y) = trace(ad(x)ad(y)),

with values in K, the Killing form on g.

Read more about this topic:  Killing Form

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