Invariance and Flows
When we discussed the Lie algebra of a Lie group we discussed “left-invariant” vector fields. More generally than this if is a diffeomorphism we say that a vector field
is “
-invariant” if it is
-related to itself. That is, a vector field on a Lie group
is left-invariant if it is
-invariant for all
.
Now we want a characterization of -invariance in terms of the flow
of
. I say that
is
-invariant if and only if
for all
. That is, the flow should commute with
.
We’ll show this by showing that the vector field has flow
. Then if
is
-related to itself we know that
, and so by uniqueness we conclude that the flows
and
are equal, as asserted.
So, what makes the flow of
? First of all, we have to check the initial condition that
, which is perfectly straightforward to check:
More involved is the differential condition. It will help if we rewrite a bit as a function of both
and
:
Now we can start on the differential condition:
And thus is indeed the flow of
.
