The second homology group of current Lie algebras

Abstract

This is an old paper put here for archeological purposes. We derive a general formula expressing the second homology of a Lie algebra of the form L\otimes A with coefficients in the trivial module through homology of $L$, cyclic homology of $A$, and other invariants of $L$ and $A$. This is achieved by using the Hopf formula expressing the second homology of a Lie algebra in terms of its presentation. We also derive a similar formula for the associated Lie algebra of the tensor product of two associative algebras.