Sharp commutator bounds on complex simple Lie algebras: the B\"ottcher--Wenzel inequality and the comass of the Cartan $3$-form

Abstract

For a complex simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ with compact conjugation $\tau$, Killing form $B$, and Hermitian form $H(x, y) = -B(x, \tau y)$, it is shown that $H([x,y],[x,y]) \leq (h^{\vee})^{-1}H(x,x)H(y,y)$, where $h^{\vee}$ is the dual Coxeter number, with equality exactly for $H$-orthogonal pairs in $\tau$-stable long-root subalgebras isomorphic to $\mathfrak{sl}(2, \mathbb{C})$. Equivalently, the comass of the Cartan $3$-form with respect to $H$ equals its comass on the compact real form: the spectral norm of the Cartan $3$-form does not increase under complexification. For the Frobenius norm on the image of a representation of Dynkin index $\ell$ the optimal constant is $2/\ell$; this contains the B\"ottcher--Wenzel and Bloch--Iserles inequalities, extends the latter to complex skew-symmetric matrices, and improves them substantially for the exceptional Lie algebras of types $F_{4}$, $E_{6}$, $E_{7}$, and $E_{8}$. The proof uses the Nahm algebra of $\mathfrak{g}$ with the conjugation induced by $\tau$: critical points of the relevant function correspond to $\tau$-twisted idempotents, and its Hessian is governed by $\tau$-twisted multiplication operators, whose anticommutation with multiplication by $i$ turns the one-sided second order condition at a maximum into a two-sided spectral bound. Subalgebras isomorphic to $\mathfrak{sl}(2, \mathbb{C})$ of Dynkin index $j$ give critical points with critical value $1/(jh^{\vee})$, whose Morse indices are computed, and the set of maximum points is a nondegenerate critical manifold. Geometrically, the maximal complex sectional curvature of a compact simple Lie group equals its maximal sectional curvature.