The reductive groups play a central role in the Langlands correspondence. Why are these groups called reductive? Does this name suggest something conceptual about these groups?
Asked
Active
Viewed 174 times
2
-
12From Wikipedia: [ For a reductive group G over a field of characteristic zero, all finite-dimensional representations of G (as an algebraic group) are completely reducible, that is, they are direct sums of irreducible representations. That is the source of the name "reductive". ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductive_group – Sam Hopkins Oct 07 '22 at 20:45