Wide Regular Subalgebras of Symmetrizable Kac-Moody Algebras and an Extension of Schur's Lemma

Abstract

The behavior of representations under restriction is a central theme in Lie theory. We study wide regular subalgebras of symmetrizable Kac-Moody algebras, extending work of Douglas and Repka on semisimple Lie algebras. A subalgebra is wide if every irreducible integrable highest weight module remains indecomposable upon restriction. Let $\mathfrak{g}$ be a symmetrizable Kac-Moody algebra with Cartan subalgebra $\mathfrak{h}$, root system $Φ$, simple roots $Π$, and root space decomposition $\mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{h}\oplus\bigoplus_{α\inΦ}\mathfrak{g}_α$. Denote by $Φ_{\operatorname{re}}$ the set of real roots. To a regular subalgebra $\mathfrak{s}$ normalized by $\mathfrak{h}$, we associate a closed subset $T\subseteq Φ$ by declaring $α\in T$ if $\mathfrak{s}\cap \mathfrak{g}_α\ne \{0\}$. Our main result is an extension of Schur's lemma: if $\mathfrak{h}\subseteq \mathfrak{s}$ and the real closure of $(T\cup(-T))\cap Φ_{\operatorname{re}}$ contains $Π$, then $(\operatorname{End} V)^{\mathfrak{s}}=\mathbb{C}\operatorname{Id}_V$ for every irreducible integrable highest weight module $V$. As a consequence, this real-root closure condition yields a sufficient condition for wideness. In the affine case, we establish a converse: if $\mathfrak{s}$ is wide, then the closure of $T\cup(-T)$ in $Φ$ is all of $Φ$, and this implication holds without assuming that $\mathfrak{h}\subseteq \mathfrak{s}$. A key ingredient is a structural result showing that closed subsets of affine root systems are closed under arbitrary finite root sums that remain roots.