Abundance of nilpotent orbits in real semisimple Lie algebras

Abstract

We formulate and prove that there are "abundant" in nilpotent orbits in real semisimple Lie algebras, in the following sense. If S denotes the collection of hyperbolic elements corresponding the weighted Dynkin diagrams coming from nilpotent orbits, then S span the maximally expected space, namely, the (-1)-eigenspace of the longest Weyl group element. The result is used to the study of fundamental groups of non-Riemannian locally symmetric spaces.