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For a natural number , the unitary group is the group of isometries of the -dimensional complex Hilbert space . This is canonically identified with the group of unitary matrices.
More generally, for a Hilbert space , is the group of unitary operators on that Hilbert space. For the purposes of studying unitary representations of Lie groups, the topology is chosen to be the strong operator topology, although other topologies on are frequently considered for other purposes.
The unitary groups are naturally topological groups and Lie groups (infinite dimensional if is infinite dimensional).
The unitary group is compact topological space, hence in particular a compact Lie group.
For , , then the canonical inclusion of unitary groups
is a 2n-equivalence, hence induces an isomorphism on homotopy groups in degrees and a surjection in degree .
Consider the coset quotient projection
By prop. and by this corollary, the projection is a Serre fibration. Furthermore, example identifies the coset with the (2n+1)-sphere
Therefore the long exact sequence of homotopy groups of the fiber sequence is of the form
Since , this implies that
is an isomorphism and that
is surjective. Hence now the statement follows by induction over .
It follows that the homotopy groups are independent of for (the “stable range”). So if , then . By Bott periodicity we have
In the unstable range for low they instead start out as follows
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
“ | 0 | ||||||||||||||
“ | “ | “ | 0 | 0 | |||||||||||
“ | “ | “ | “ | “ | 0 | ||||||||||
“ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | 0 | 0 | |||||||
“ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | 0 | ||||||
“ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | 0 | 0 | |||
“ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | “ | 0 |
Due to the relation to the special unitary group, the higher homotopy groups of and agree. The row can be found using the fact that is diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere . The row can be found using Mimura-Toda 63. Otherwise the table is given in columns , , and in rows , , by the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mathematics, Table 6.VII in Appendix A.
The table above equivalently corresponds to the lower-degree unstable K-theory groups of spheres. In particular, this computes the homotopy groups:
(see there for more).
A good discussion about the various topologies one might place on and how they all agree and make a Polish group is in (Espinoza-Uribe).
For a Hilbert space, which can be either finite or infinite dimensional, the unitary group and the general linear group , regarded as topological groups, have the same homotopy type.
Additionally, is a maximal compact subgroup of for finite-dimensional .
By the Gram-Schmidt process.
(Kuiper’s theorem)
For a separable infinite-dimensional complex Hilbert space , the unitary group is contractible in the norm topology.
See also Kuiper's theorem. Note that is also contractible in the strong operator topology (due to Dixmier and Douady).
This in contrast to the finite dimensional situation. For (), is not contractible.
Write for the classifying space of the topological group . Inclusion of matrices into larger matrices gives a canonical sequence of inclusions
The homotopy direct limit over this is written
or sometimes . Notice that this is very different from for an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. See topological K-theory for more on this.
For all , the unitary group is a split group extension of the circle group by the special unitary group
Hence it is a semidirect product group
The unitary group is equivalently the intersection of the orthogonal group , the symplectic group and the complex general linear group inside the real general linear group .
Actually it is already the intersection of any two of these three, a fact also known as the “2 out of 3-property” of the unitary group.
This intersection property makes a G-structure for (an almost Hermitian structure) precisely a joint orthogonal structure, almost symplectic structure and almost complex structure. In the first-order integrable case this is precisely a joint orthogonal structure (Riemannian manifold structure), symplectic structure and complex structure.
is the circle group.
The (2n+1)-spheres are coset spaces of unitary groups
The complex Stiefel manifold (example ) is 2(k-n)-connected.
Consider the coset quotient projection
By prop. and by this corollary the projection is a Serre fibration. Therefore there is induced the long exact sequence of homotopy groups of this fiber sequence, and by prop. it has the following form in degrees bounded by :
This implies the claim.
The subgroup of unitary matrices with determinant equal to 1 is the special unitary group. The quotient by the center is the projective unitary group. The space of equivalence classes of unitary matrices under conjugation is the symmetric product of circles.
The analog of the unitary group for real metric spaces is the orthogonal group.
similarly: quaternionic unitary group
The Lie algebra is the unitary Lie algebra.
(…)
For U(ℋ):
Last revised on May 31, 2024 at 06:42:23. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.