Formal deformations, contractions and moduli spaces of Lie algebras

Jump deformations and contractions of Lie algebras are inverse concepts, but the approaches to their computations are quite different. In this paper, we contrast the two approaches, showing how to compute jump deformations from the miniversal deformation of a Lie algebra, and thus arrive at the contractions. We also compute contractions directly. We use the moduli spaces of real 3-dimensional and complex 3 and 4-dimensional Lie algebras as models for explaining a deformation theory approach to computation of contractions.Comment: 27 page

Leibniz algebra deformations of a Lie algebra

In this note we compute Leibniz algebra deformations of the 3-dimensional nilpotent Lie algebra $\mathfrak{n}_3$ and compare it with its Lie deformations. It turns out that there are 3 extra Leibniz deformations. We also describe the versal Leibniz deformation of $\mathfrak{n}_3$ with the versal base.Comment: 15 page

Versal deformation of the Lie algebra L2L_2

We investigate deformations of the infinite dimensional vector field Lie algebra spanned by the fields $e_i = z^{i+1}d/dz$, where $i \ge 2$. The goal is to describe the base of a ``versal'' deformation; such a versal deformation induces all the other nonequivalent deformations and solves the deformation problem completely. \u

Stratification of moduli spaces of Lie algebras, similar matrices and bilinear forms

In this paper, the authors apply a stratification of moduli spaces of complex Lie algebras to analyzing the moduli spaces of nxn matrices under scalar similarity and bilinear forms under the cogredient action. For similar matrices, we give a complete description of a stratification of the space by some very simple projective orbifolds of the form P^n/G, where G is a subgroup of the symmetric group sigma_{n+1} acting on P^n by permuting the projective coordinates. For bilinear forms, we give a similar stratification up to dimension 4

Global Geometric Deformations of the Virasoro algebra, current and affine algebras by Krichever-Novikov type algebra

In two earlier articles we constructed algebraic-geometric families of genus one (i.e. elliptic) Lie algebras of Krichever-Novikov type. The considered algebras are vector fields, current and affine Lie algebras. These families deform the Witt algebra, the Virasoro algebra, the classical current, and the affine Kac-Moody Lie algebras respectively. The constructed families are not equivalent (not even locally) to the trivial families, despite the fact that the classical algebras are formally rigid. This effect is due to the fact that the algebras are infinite dimensional. In this article the results are reviewed and developed further. The constructions are induced by the geometric process of degenerating the elliptic curves to singular cubics. The algebras are of relevance in the global operator approach to the Wess-Zumino-Witten-Novikov models appearing in the quantization of Conformal Field Theory.Comment: 17 page