Adjoints in symmetric squares of Lie algebra representations

Abstract

*Caveat: we learned post-factum that most of these results are not novel. We are keeping this paper for continuity reasons.* Given finite-dimensional complex representations $V$ and $V'$ of a simply-connected semisimple compact Lie group $G$, we determine the dimension of the $G$-invariant subspace of $\mathrm{adj}(G)\otimes V\otimes V'$, of $\mathrm{adj}(G)\otimes S^2 V$, and of $\mathrm{adj}(G)\otimes\Lambda^2 V$, where $\mathrm{adj}(G)$ is the adjoint representation. In other words we derive the multiplicity with which summands of $\mathrm{adj}(G)$ appear in a tensor product $V \otimes V'$ or (anti)symmetric square $S^2 V$ or $\Lambda^2 V$. We find in particular that the dimension of the $G$-invariant subspace of $\mathrm{adj}(G)\otimes S^2 V$ is larger than (resp. smaller or equal to) that of $\mathrm{adj}(G)\otimes\Lambda^2 V$ for a symplectic (resp. orthogonal) representation $V$.