Abstract. We present an explicit description of the 'fine group gradings' (i.e. group gradings which cannot be further refined) of the real forms of the semisimple Lie algebras sl(4, C), sp(4, C), and o(4, C). All together 12 real Lie algebras are considered, and the total of 44 of their fine group gradings are listed.The inclusions sl(4, C) ⊃ sp(4, C) ⊃ o(4, C) are an important tool in our presentation. Systematic use is made of the faithful representations of the three Lie algebras by 4 × 4 matrices.
IntroductionWide diversity of applications of low dimensional semisimple Lie algebras, real or complex, is witnessed by the innumerable papers found in the literature, where such Lie algebras play a role. In the article we consider the real forms of the three semisimple Lie algebras which are faithfully represented by 4 × 4 matrices. More precisely, we have the Lie algebras and the inclusions among them:sl(4, C) ⊃ sp(4, C) ⊃ o(4, C).Here sl(4, C) is the Lie algebra of all traceless matrices C 4×4 . Then sp(4, C) is the Lie algebra of all (symplectic) transformations which preserve a skew-symmetric bilinear form in the 4-space C 4 . Finally, o(4, C) is the Lie algebra of all (orthogonal) transformations which preserve a symmetric bilinear form in C 4 . The second inclusion is somewhat misleading and therefore deserves a comment. Due to the fact that o(4, C) ≃ sl(2, C) × sl(2, C) is not simple, one has a choice considering o(4, C) as linear transformations in C 4 . One can introduce symmetric or skew-symmetric bilinear form in C 4 invariant under the matrices of o(4, C). In the symmetric case, o(4, C) contains all such transformations, while all symplectic transformations are in sp(4, C) and only some of them in o(4, C).The list of the real forms considered in this paper is the following:sl(4, C) : sl(4, R), su * (4), su(4, 0), su(3, 1), su(2, 2)sp(4, C) : sp(4, R), usp(4, 0), usp(2, 2)o(4, C) : so * (4), so(4, 0), so(3, 1), so(2, 2)The subject of our paper are the gradings of these real forms. For a general motivation for studying the gradings, we can point out [10,11,12,13,20,21]. Applications of the real forms are too numerous to be mentioned here. For example, let us just mention that among the orthogonal realizations of B 2 there are the Lie algebras of the de Sitter groups, that some real forms of the symplectic realization have been intensively applied in the recent years in nuclear physics, and also in quantum optics [18,19,1,3].A grading carries basic structural information about its Lie algebra. That is particularly true about the fine grading. One type of a grading is obtained by decomposing the Lie algebra into eigensubspaces of mutually commuting automorphisms. This grading has an interesting property: Its grading subspaces can be indexed by elements of an Abelian group. Such gradings are called group gradings. The most famous example of a grading of this type, obtained by means of automorphisms from the MAD-group which is the maximal torus of the corresponding Lie group, is called the root decompositio...