Skip to content →

Tag: M-geometry

Quiver-superpotentials

It’s been a while, so let’s include a recap : a (transitive) permutation representation of the modular group Γ=PSL2(Z) is determined by the conjugacy class of a cofinite subgroup ΛΓ, or equivalently, to a dessin d’enfant. We have introduced a quiver (aka an oriented graph) which comes from a triangulation of the compactification of H/Λ where H is the hyperbolic upper half-plane. This quiver is independent of the chosen embedding of the dessin in the Dedeking tessellation. (For more on these terms and constructions, please consult the series Modular subgroups and Dessins d’enfants).

Why are quivers useful? To start, any quiver Q defines a noncommutative algebra, the path algebra CQ, which has as a C-basis all oriented paths in the quiver and multiplication is induced by concatenation of paths (when possible, or zero otherwise). Usually, it is quite hard to make actual computations in noncommutative algebras, but in the case of path algebras you can just see what happens.

Moreover, we can also see the finite dimensional representations of this algebra CQ. Up to isomorphism they are all of the following form : at each vertex vi of the quiver one places a finite dimensional vectorspace Cdi and any arrow in the quiver
[tex]\xymatrix{\vtx{v_i} \ar[r]^a & \vtx{v_j}}[/tex] determines a linear map between these vertex spaces, that is, to a corresponds a matrix in Mdj×di(C). These matrices determine how the paths of length one act on the representation, longer paths act via multiplcation of matrices along the oriented path.

A necklace in the quiver is a closed oriented path in the quiver up to cyclic permutation of the arrows making up the cycle. That is, we are free to choose the start (and end) point of the cycle. For example, in the one-cycle quiver

[tex]\xymatrix{\vtx{} \ar[rr]^a & & \vtx{} \ar[ld]^b \ & \vtx{} \ar[lu]^c &}[/tex]

the basic necklace can be represented as abc or bca or cab. How does a necklace act on a representation? Well, the matrix-multiplication of the matrices corresponding to the arrows gives a square matrix in each of the vertices in the cycle. Though the dimensions of this matrix may vary from vertex to vertex, what does not change (and hence is a property of the necklace rather than of the particular choice of cycle) is the trace of this matrix. That is, necklaces give complex-valued functions on representations of CQ and by a result of Artin and Procesi there are enough of them to distinguish isoclasses of (semi)simple representations! That is, linear combinations a necklaces (aka super-potentials) can be viewed, after taking traces, as complex-valued functions on all representations (similar to character-functions).

In physics, one views these functions as potentials and it then interested in the points (representations) where this function is extremal (minimal) : the vacua. Clearly, this does not make much sense in the complex-case but is relevant when we look at the real-case (where we look at skew-Hermitian matrices rather than all matrices). A motivating example (the Yang-Mills potential) is given in Example 2.3.2 of Victor Ginzburg’s paper Calabi-Yau algebras.

Let Φ be a super-potential (again, a linear combination of necklaces) then our commutative intuition tells us that extrema correspond to zeroes of all partial differentials Φa where a runs over all coordinates (in our case, the arrows of the quiver). One can make sense of differentials of necklaces (and super-potentials) as follows : the partial differential with respect to an arrow a occurring in a term of Φ is defined to be the path in the quiver one obtains by removing all 1-occurrences of a in the necklaces (defining Φ) and rearranging terms to get a maximal broken necklace (using the cyclic property of necklaces). An example, for the cyclic quiver above let us take as super-potential abcabc (2 cyclic turns), then for example

Φb=cabca+cabca=2cabca

(the first term corresponds to the first occurrence of b, the second to the second). Okay, but then the vacua-representations will be the representations of the quotient-algebra (which I like to call the vacualgebra)

U(Q,Φ)=CQ(Φ/a,a)

which in ‘physical relevant settings’ (whatever that means…) turn out to be Calabi-Yau algebras.

But, let us return to the case of subgroups of the modular group and their quivers. Do we have a natural super-potential in this case? Well yes, the quiver encoded a triangulation of the compactification of H/Λ and if we choose an orientation it turns out that all ‘black’ triangles (with respect to the Dedekind tessellation) have their arrow-sides defining a necklace, whereas for the ‘white’ triangles the reverse orientation makes the arrow-sides into a necklace. Hence, it makes sense to look at the cubic superpotential Φ being the sum over all triangle-sides-necklaces with a +1-coefficient for the black triangles and a -1-coefficient for the white ones. Let’s consider an index three example from a previous post


[tex]\xymatrix{& & \rho \ar[lld]_d \ar[ld]^f \ar[rd]^e & \
i \ar[rrd]_a & i+1 \ar[rd]^b & & \omega \ar[ld]^c \
& & 0 \ar[uu]^h \ar@/^/[uu]^g \ar@/_/[uu]_i &}[/tex]

In this case the super-potential coming from the triangulation is

Φ=aid+agdcge+chebhf+bif

and therefore we have a noncommutative algebra U(Q,Φ) associated to this index 3 subgroup. Contrary to what I believed at the start of this series, the algebras one obtains in this way from dessins d’enfants are far from being Calabi-Yau (in whatever definition). For example, using a GAP-program written by Raf Bocklandt Ive checked that the growth rate of the above algebra is similar to that of C[x], so in this case U(Q,Φ) can be viewed as a noncommutative curve (with singularities).

However, this is not the case for all such algebras. For example, the vacualgebra associated to the second index three subgroup (whose fundamental domain and quiver were depicted at the end of this post) has growth rate similar to that of Cx,y

I have an outlandish conjecture about the growth-behavior of all algebras U(Q,Φ) coming from dessins d’enfants : the algebra sees what the monodromy representation of the dessin sees of the modular group (or of the third braid group).
I can make this more precise, but perhaps it is wiser to calculate one or two further examples…

Leave a Comment

Anabelian & Noncommutative Geometry 2

Last time (possibly with help from the survival guide) we have seen that the universal map from the modular group Γ=PSL2(Z) to its profinite completion Γ^=lim PSL2(Z)/N (limit over all finite index normal subgroups N) gives an embedding of the sets of (continuous) simple finite dimensional representations

simpc Γ^simp Γ

and based on the example μ=simpc Z^simp Z=C we would like the above embedding to be dense in some kind of noncommutative analogon of the Zariski topology on simp Γ.

We use the Zariski topology on simp CΓ as in these two M-geometry posts (( already, I regret terminology, I should have just called it noncommutative geometry )). So, what’s this idea in this special case? Let g be the vectorspace with basis the conjugacy classes of elements of Γ (that is, the space of class functions). As explained here it is a consequence of the Artin-Procesi theorem that the linear functions g separate finite dimensional (semi)simple representations of Γ. That is we have an embedding

simp Γg

and we can define closed subsets of simp Γ as subsets of simple representations on which a set of class-functions vanish. With this definition of Zariski topology it is immediately clear that the image of simpc Γ^ is dense. For, suppose it would be contained in a proper closed subset then there would be a class-function vanishing on all simples of Γ^ so, in particular, there should be a bound on the number of simples of finite quotients Γ/N which clearly is not the case (just look at the quotients PSL2(Fp)).

But then, the same holds if we replace ‘simples of Γ^’ by ‘simple components of permutation representations of Γ’. This is the importance of Farey symbols to the representation problem of the modular group. They give us a manageable subset of simples which is nevertheless dense in the whole space. To utilize this a natural idea might be to ask what such a permutation representation can see of the modular group, or in geometric terms, what the tangent space is to simp Γ in a permutation representation (( more precisely, in the ‘cluster’ of points making up the simple components of the representation representation )). We will call this the modular content of the permutation representation and to understand it we will have to compute the tangent quiver t CΓ.

Leave a Comment

M-geometry (3)

For any finite dimensional A-representation S we defined before a character χ(S) which is an linear functional on the noncommutative functions gA=A/[A,A]vect and defined via

χa(S)=Tr(a|S) for all aA

We would like to have enough such characters to separate simples, that is we would like to have an embedding

simp AgA

from the set of all finite dimensional simple A-representations simp A into the linear dual of gA. This is a consequence of the celebrated Artin-Procesi theorem.

Michael Artin was the first person to approach representation theory via algebraic geometry and geometric invariant theory. In his 1969 classical paper “On Azumaya algebras and finite dimensional representations of rings” he introduced the affine scheme repn A of all n-dimensional representations of A on which the group GLn acts via basechange, the orbits of which are exactly the isomorphism classes of representations. He went on to use the Hilbert criterium in invariant theory to prove that the closed orbits for this action are exactly the isomorphism classes of semi-simple -dimensional representations. Invariant theory tells us that there are enough invariant polynomials to separate closed orbits, so we would be done if the caracters would generate the ring of invariant polynmials, a statement first conjectured in this paper.

Claudio Procesi was able to prove this conjecture in his 1976 paper “The invariant theory of n×n matrices” in which he reformulated the fundamental theorems on GLn-invariants to show that the ring of invariant polynomials of m n×n matrices under simultaneous conjugation is generated by traces of words in the matrices (and even managed to limit the number of letters in the words required to n2+1). Using the properties of the Reynolds operator in invariant theory it then follows that the same applies to the GLn-action on the representation schemes repn A.

So, let us reformulate their result a bit. Assume the affine C-algebra A is generated by the elements a1,,am then we define a necklace to be an equivalence class of words in the ai, where two words are equivalent iff they are the same upto cyclic permutation of letters. For example a1a22a1a3 and a2a1a3a1a2 determine the same necklace. Remark that traces of different words corresponding to the same necklace have the same value and that the noncommutative functions gA are spanned by necklaces.

The Artin-Procesi theorem then asserts that if S and T are non-isomorphic simple A-representations, then χ(S)χ(T) as elements of gA and even that they differ on a necklace in the generators of A of length at most n2+1. Phrased differently, the array of characters of simples evaluated at necklaces is a substitute for the clasical character-table in finite group theory.

Leave a Comment