Simplicity of vacuum modules and associated varieties

Abstract

In this note, we prove that the universal affine vertex algebra associated with a simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ is simple if and only if the associated variety of its unique simple quotient is equal to $\mathfrak{g}^*$. We also derive an analogous result for the quantized Drinfeld-Sokolov reduction applied to the universal affine vertex algebra.