Matrix Groups

These notes were developed from a course taught at Rice Univ- sity in the spring of 1976 and again at the University of Hawaii in the spring of 1977. It is assumed that the students know some linear algebra and a little about differentiation of vector-valued functions. The idea is to introduce students to some of the concepts of Lie group theory--all done at the concrete level of matrix groups. As much as we could, we motivated developments as a means of deciding when two matrix groups (with different definitions) are isomorphie. In Chapter I "group" is defined and examples are given; ho- morphism and isomorphism are defined. For a field k denotes the algebra of n x n matrices over k We recall that A E Mn(k) has an inverse if and only if det A # 0 , and define the general linear group GL(n,k) We construct the skew-field E of quaternions and note that for A E Mn(E) to operate linearlyon Rn we must operate on the right (since we multiply a vector by a scalar n n on the left). So we use row vectors for Rn, c E and write xA , for the row vector obtained by matrix multiplication. We get a complex-valued determinant function on Mn (E) such that det A # 0 guarantees that A has an inverse.