RUS  ENG
Full version
JOURNALS // Zapiski Nauchnykh Seminarov POMI // Archive

Zap. Nauchn. Sem. POMI, 2016 Volume 443, Pages 151–221 (Mi znsl6264)

This article is cited in 14 papers

The commutators of classical groups

R. Hazrata, N. Vavilovb, Z. Zhangc

a Centre for Research in Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Australia
b Department of Mathematics and Mechanics, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
c Department of Mathematics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

Abstract: In his seminal paper, half a century ago, Hyman Bass established a commutator formula in the setting of (stable) general linear group which was the key step in defining the $K_1$ group. Namely, he proved that for an associative ring $A$ with identity,
$$ E(A)=[E(A),E(A)]=[\operatorname{GL}(A),\operatorname{GL}(A)], $$
where $\operatorname{GL}(A)$ is the stable general linear group and $E(A)$ is its elementary subgroup. Since then, various commutator formulas have been studied in stable and non-stable settings, and for a range of classical and algebraic like-groups, mostly in relation to subnormal subgroups of these groups. The major classical theorems and methods developed include some of the splendid results of the heroes of classical algebraic $K$-theory; Bak, Quillen, Milnor, Suslin, Swan and Vaserstein, among others.
One of the dominant techniques in establishing commutator type results is localisation. In this note we describe some recent applications of localisation methods to the study (higher/relative) commutators in the groups of points of algebraic and algebraic-like groups, such as general linear groups, $\operatorname{GL}(n,A)$, unitary groups $\operatorname{GU}(2n,A,\Lambda)$ and Chevalley groups $G(\Phi,A)$. We also state some of the intermediate results as well as some corollaries of these results.
This note provides a general overview of the subject and covers the current activities. It contains complete proofs of several main results to give the reader a self-contained source. We have borrowed the proofs from our previous papers and expositions [38–50, 99, 100, 129–132].

Key words and phrases: general linear groups, unitary groups, Chevalley groups, elementary subgroups, elementary generators, localisation, relative subgroups, conjugation calculus, commutator calculus, Noetherian reduction, the Quillen–Suslin lemma, localisation-completion, commutator formulae, commutator width, nilpotency of $\mathrm K_1$, nilpotent filtration.

UDC: 512

Received: 02.12.2015

Language: English


 English version:
Journal of Mathematical Sciences (New York), 2017, 222:4, 466–515

Bibliographic databases:


© Steklov Math. Inst. of RAS, 2024