Lie groups are smooth manifolds and, therefore, can be studied using differentia l calculus, in contrast with the

case of more general topological groups. One of the key ideas in the theory of Lie groups is to replace the global object, the group, with its local or linearized version, which Lie himself called its "infin itesimal group" and which has since become known as its Lie algebra. Lie groups play an enormous role in modern geometry, on several different levels . Felix Klein argued in his Erlangen program that one can consider various "geom etries" by specifying an appropriate transformation group that leaves certain ge ometric properties invariant. Thus Euclidean geometry corresponds to the choice of the group E(3) of distance-preserving transformations of the Euclidean space R3, conformal geometry corresponds to enlarging the group to the conformal group , whereas in projective geometry one is interested in the properties invariant u nder the projective group. This idea later led to the notion of a G-structure, w here G is a Lie group of "local" symmetries of a manifold. On a "global" level, whenever a Lie group acts on a geometric object, such as a Riemannian or a sympl ectic manifold, this action provides a measure of rigidity and yields a rich alg ebraic structure. The presence of continuous symmetries expressed via a Lie grou p action on a manifold places strong constraints on its geometry and facilitates analysis on the manifold. Linear actions of Lie groups are especially important , and are studied in representation theory. In the 1940s 1950s, Ellis Kolchin, Armand Borel, and Claude Chevalley realised that many foundational results concerning Lie groups can be developed completely alge braically, giving rise to the theory of algebraic groups defined over an arbitra ry field. This insight opened new possibilities in pure algebra, by providing a uniform construction for most finite simple groups, as well as in algebraic geom etry. The theory of automorphic forms, an important branch of modern number theo ry, deals extensively with analogues of Lie groups over adele rings; p-adic Lie groups play an important role, via their connections with Galois representations in number theory. Definitions and examples[edit source | editbeta] A real Lie group is a group that is also a finite-dimensional real smooth manifo ld, and in which the group operations of multiplication and inversion are smooth maps. Smoothness of the group multiplication \mu:G\times G\to G\quad \mu(x,y)=xy means that is a smooth mapping of the product manifold G G into G. These two require ments can be combined to the single requirement that the mapping (x,y)\mapsto x^{-1}y be a smooth mapping of the product manifold into G. First examples[edit source | editbeta] The 2 2 real invertible matrices form a group under multiplication, denoted by GL(2 , R): \operatorname{GL}(2, \mathbf{R}) = \left\{A=\begin{pmatrix}a&b\\c&d\end{pmatrix }: \det A=ad-bc \ne 0\right\}. This is a four-dimensional noncompact real Lie group. This group is disconnected ; it has two connected components corresponding to the positive and negative val ues of the determinant. The rotation matrices form a subgroup of GL(2, R), denoted by SO(2, R). It is a Lie group in its own right: specifically, a one-dimensional compact connected Li e group which is diffeomorphic to the circle. Using the rotation angle as a param eter, this group can be parametrized as follows: \operatorname{SO}(2, \mathbf{R}) =\left\{\begin{pmatrix} \cos\varphi & -\sin \v arphi \\ \sin \varphi & \cos \varphi \end{pmatrix}: \varphi\in\mathbf{R}/2\pi\m athbf{Z}\right\}. Addition of the angles corresponds to multiplication of the elements of SO(2, R) , and taking the opposite angle corresponds to inversion. Thus both multiplicati on and inversion are differentiable maps. The orthogonal group also forms an interesting example of a Lie group. All of the previous examples of Lie groups fall within the class of classical gr oups.

Related concepts[edit source | editbeta] A complex Lie group is defined in the same way using complex manifolds rather th an real ones (example: SL(2, C)), and similarly[clarification needed] one can de fine a p-adic Lie group over the p-adic numbers. Hilbert's fifth problem asked w hether replacing differentiable manifolds with topological or analytic ones can yield new examples. The answer to this question turned out to be negative: in 19 52, Gleason, Montgomery and Zippin showed that if G is a topological manifold wi th continuous group operations, then there exists exactly one analytic structure on G which turns it into a Lie group (see also Hilbert Smith conjecture). If the un derlying manifold is allowed to be infinite dimensional (for example, a Hilbert manifold), then one arrives at the notion of an infinite-dimensional Lie group. It is possible to define analogues of many Lie groups over finite fields, and th ese give most of the examples of finite simple groups. The language of category theory provides a concise definition for Lie groups: a Lie group is a group object in the category of smooth manifolds. This is importa nt, because it allows generalization of the notion of a Lie group to Lie supergr oups.