Universal central extensions of Lie-Rinehart algebras

Abstract

In this paper we study the universal central extension of a Lie--Rinehart algebra and we give a description of it. Then we study the lifting of automorphisms and derivations to central extensions. We also give a definition of a non-abelian tensor product in Lie--Rinehart algebras based on the construction of Ellis of non-abelian tensor product of Lie algebras. We relate this non-abelian tensor product to the universal central extension.