Algebraic group

In algebraic geometry, an algebraic group (or group variety) is a group that is an algebraic variety, such that the multiplication and inversion operations are given by regular maps on the variety.

In terms of category theory, an algebraic group is a group object in the category of algebraic varieties.

Several important classes of groups are algebraic groups, including:

Two important classes of algebraic groups arise, that for the most part are studied separately: abelian varieties (the 'projective' theory) and linear algebraic groups (the 'affine' theory). There are certainly examples that are neither one nor the other — these occur for example in the modern theory of integrals of the second and third kinds such as the Weierstrass zeta function, or the theory of generalized Jacobians. But according to Chevalley's structure theorem any algebraic group is an extension of an abelian variety by a linear algebraic group. This is a result of Claude Chevalley: if K is a perfect field, and G an algebraic group over K, there exists a unique normal closed subgroup H in G, such that H is a linear group and G/H an abelian variety.

According to another basic theorem, any group in the category of affine varieties has a faithful finite-dimensional linear representation: we can consider it to be a matrix group over K, defined by polynomials over K and with matrix multiplication as the group operation. For that reason a concept of affine algebraic group is redundant over a field — we may as well use a very concrete definition. Note that this means that algebraic group is narrower than Lie group, when working over the field of real numbers: there are examples such as the universal cover of the 2×2 special linear group that are Lie groups, but have no faithful linear representation. A more obvious difference between the two concepts arises because the identity component of an affine algebraic group G is necessarily of finite index in G.

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