Reference recommendation for the study of simple Lie algebras

book-recommendationlie-algebraslie-groupsreference-requestrepresentation-theory

I'm a physics student trying to learn something about the classification of compact simple Lie algebras. I asked one of my TA's for a book recommendation and got Fulton's "Representation Theory". After giving it a shot and reading chapters 7 and 8 (with which's topics I'm already familiar with) I can't really say that I'm understanding a lot. It's hard to say why, but I guess I'm not a huge fan of the way how the author explains (words) things, and I'm missing the mathematical structure (Lemma, Prop., Thm, Proof, etc.).

Googling the topic gives a lot of results, but many of these are semester projects or thesis from other people and not really textbooks. I don't mind reading those, but I'm not really sure if these are the most pedagogical approach to learn something about the topic. Some of the above mentioned semester projects/thesis:

The last one actually looked quite promising, but I haven't really had time to check it in a bit more detail. My question therefore boils down to: What textbooks/references can you recommend for the topic "Classification of compact simple Lie algebras"?

PS:

  • I've already had a proper two semester course on representation
    theory, starting with groups and their properties in a abstract form,
    then to represenations in general, then to Lie algebra
    representations, etc. So I have some basic understanding about these
    things. I saw that in the context of representation theory some
    concepts of differential geometry are mentioned (manifolds,
    differentials, etc.), you can also assume that a basic knowledge is
    present in this area as well.
  • I've seen this question, which kind of relates to mine, but it seems to focus on much narrower questions than mine, so I don't really think it qualifies as duplicate.

Best Answer

For the classification of finite-dimensional complex simple Lie algebras I can indeed recommend Humphrey's book, Knapp's book, and in particular the diploma thesis by Florian Wisser. Fulton's book classifes also all finite-dimensional representations of these Lie algebras. This is more than what you ask for in your title. Perhaps this was a misunderstanding. In physics you definitely want both.

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