Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène, Boris Kunyavskii, Vladimir L. Popov, Zinovy Reichstein: Is the function field of a reductive Lie algebra purely transcendental over the field of invariants for the adjoint action?

colliot@math.u-psud.fr, kunyav@macs.biu.ac.il, popovvl@orc.ru, reichst@math.ubc.ca

Submission: 2009, Jan 27, revised: 2010, Apr 17; to appear in Compositio Math.

Let k be a field of characteristic zero, let G be a connected reductive algebraic group over k and let g be its Lie algebra. Let k(G), respectively, k(g), be the field of k-rational functions on G, respectively, g. The conjugation action of G on itself induces the adjoint action of G on g. We investigate the question whether or not the field extensions k(G)/k(G)^G and k(g)/k(g) are purely transcendental. We show that the answer is the same for k(G)/k(G)^G and k(g)/k(g)^G, and reduce the problem to the case where G is simple. For simple groups we show that the answer is positive if G is split of type A_n or C_n, and negative for groups of other types, except possibly G_2. A key ingredient in the proof of the negative result is a recent formula for the unramified Brauer group of a homogeneous space with connected stabilizers.

As a byproduct of our investigation we give an affirmative answer to a question of Grothendieck about the existence of a rational section of the categorical quotient morphism for the conjugating action of $G$ on itself.

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 14E08, 17B45, 14L30, 20C10, 14F22

Keywords and Phrases: Algebraic group, simple Lie algebra, rationality problem, integral representation, algebraic torus, unramified Brauer group

Full text: dvi.gz 87 k, dvi 210 k, ps.gz 1210 k, pdf.gz 382 k, pdf 424 k.


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