Frobenius Recip-Rocity and Extensions of Nilpotent Lie Groups
TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 298, Number I, November 1986 FROBENIUS RECIP-ROCITY AND EXTENSIONS OF NILPOTENT LIE GROUPS JEFFREY FOX ABSTRACT. In §1 we use COO-vector methods, essentially Frobenius reciprocity, to derive the Howe-Richardson multiplicity formula for compact nilmanifolds. In §2 we use Frobenius reciprocity to generalize and considerably simplify a reduction procedure developed by Howe for solvable groups to general extensions of nilpotent Lie groups. In §3 we give an application of the previous results to obtain a reduction formula for solvable Lie groups. Introduction. In the representation theory of rings the fact that the tensor product functor and Hom functor are adjoints is of fundamental importance and at the time very simple and elegant. When this adjointness property is translated into a statement about representations of finite groups via the group ring, the classical Frobenius reciprocity theorem emerges. From this point of view, Frobenius reciproc- ity, aside from being a useful tool, provides a very natural explanation for many phenomena in representation theory. When G is a Lie group and r is a discrete cocompact subgroup, a main problem in harmonic analysis is to describe the decomposition of ind~(1)-the quasiregular representation. When G is semisimple the problem is enormously difficult, and little is known in general. However, if G is nilpotent, a rather detailed description of ind¥(l) is available, thanks to the work of Moore, Howe, Richardson, and Corwin and Greenleaf [M, H-I, R, C-G]. If G is solvable Howe has developed an inductive method of describing ind~(l) [H-2].
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