The normalization of the representation dimension

Normalization, thus rescaling of a mathematical invariant is mathematically irrelevant; its only porpuse is to help to develop a proper intuition. The aim is to obtain intrinsic values when one evaluates the normalized invariant on basic objects - what these "basic objects" are, may depend on the invariant in question. For example, if one considers the Krull dimension of a commutative ring, the basic objects are obviously the polynomial rings in n variables with coefficients in a field, and the Krull dimension yields precisely this number n.

The normalization of the representation dimension proposed here refers to the exterior algebras Λ(V) of finite dimensional vector spaces V as the corresponding basic objects - the normalized representation dimension of Λ(V) is just the projective dimension of V. Instead of looking at the exterior algebras, one also may refer to truncated symmetric algebras, as Krause-Kussin and Oppermann have shown, or else to corresponding graded algebras (see the main examples).

Note that the reference to exterior algebras and symmetric algebras seems to be quite natural, since the new developments indicate that the representation dimension is strongly related to (twisted) commutativity conditions.


BIREP
Last modified: Mon Feb 02 21:47:58 CET 2008