mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, the tensor representations of the

general linear group In mathematics, the general linear group of degree ''n'' is the set of invertible matrices, together with the operation of ordinary matrix multiplication. This forms a group, because the product of two invertible matrices is again invertible, ...

are those that are obtained by taking finitely many

tensor product In mathematics, the tensor product V \otimes W of two vector spaces and (over the same field) is a vector space to which is associated a bilinear map V\times W \to V\otimes W that maps a pair (v,w),\ v\in V, w\in W to an element of V \otime ...

s of the fundamental representation and its dual. The irreducible factors of such a representation are also called tensor representations, and can be obtained by applying Schur functors (associated to Young tableaux). These coincide with the

rational representation In mathematics, in the representation theory of algebraic group In mathematics, an algebraic group is an algebraic variety endowed with a group structure which is compatible with its structure as an algebraic variety. Thus the study of algeb ...

s of the general linear group. More generally, a matrix group is any subgroup of the general linear group. A tensor representation of a matrix group is any representation that is contained in a tensor representation of the general linear group. For example, the

orthogonal group In mathematics, the orthogonal group in dimension , denoted , is the group of distance-preserving transformations of a Euclidean space of dimension that preserve a fixed point, where the group operation is given by composing transformations. ...

O(''n'') admits a tensor representation on the space of all trace-free symmetric tensors of order two. For orthogonal groups, the tensor representations are contrasted with the spin representations. The

classical group In mathematics, the classical groups are defined as the special linear groups over the reals , the complex numbers and the quaternions together with special automorphism groups of symmetric or skew-symmetric bilinear forms and Hermitian or s ...

s, like the symplectic group, have the property that all finite-dimensional representations are tensor representations (by Weyl's construction), while other representations (like the metaplectic representation) exist in infinite dimensions.

References

* {{citation, author1=Roe Goodman, author2=Nolan Wallach, title=Symmetry, representations, and invariants, publisher=Springer, year=2009, chapters 9 and 10. * Bargmann, V., & Todorov, I. T. (1977). Spaces of analytic functions on a complex cone as carriers for the symmetric tensor representations of SO(''n''). Journal of Mathematical Physics, 18(6), 1141–1148. Tensors