We assume, as already stated, that the scalar product is nondegenerate. Let
be the basis
dual to the basis
in the scalar product
,
Consider the vector , where the vector
is such that
and
.
This vector exists since we assume the Coxeter group to be of indefinite type. Let
be the
hyperplane orthogonal to
. Because
, the vectors
’s all lie on the positive side of
,
. By contrast, the vectors
’s all lie on the negative side of
since
. Furthermore,
has negative norm squared,
.
Thus, in the case of Coxeter groups of indefinite type (with a nondegenerate metric), one can choose a
hyperplane such that the positive roots lie on one side of it and the fundamental weights on the other side.
The converse is true for Coxeter group of finite type: In that case, there exists
such that
is positive, implying that the positive roots and the fundamental weights are on the same side of
the hyperplane
.
We now consider a particular subclass of Coxeter groups of indefinite type, called Lorentzian Coxeter
groups. These are Coxeter groups such that the scalar product is of Lorentzian signature
.
They are discrete subgroups of the orthochronous Lorentz group
preserving the time
orientation. Since the
are spacelike, the reflection hyperplanes are timelike and thus the generating
reflections
preserve the time orientation. The hyperplane
from the previous paragraph
is spacelike. In this section, we shall adopt Lorentzian coordinates so that
has equation
and we shall choose the time orientation so that the positive roots have a negative time
component. The fundamental weights have then a positive time component. This choice is purely
conventional and is made here for convenience. Depending on the circumstances, the other
time orientation might be more useful and will sometimes be adopted later (see for instance
Section 4.8).
Turn now to the cone defined by Equation (3.35
). This cone is clearly given by
By definition, a hyperbolic Coxeter group is a Lorentzian Coxeter group such that the vectors in are
all timelike,
for all
. Hyperbolic Coxeter groups are precisely the groups that emerge
in the gravitational billiards of physical interest. The hyperbolicity condition forces
for all
, and in particular,
: The fundamental weights are timelike or null. The cone
then lies within the light cone. This does not occur for generic (non-hyperbolic) Lorentzian
algebras.
The following theorem enables one to decide whether a Coxeter group is hyperbolic by mere inspection of its Coxeter graph.
Theorem: Let be a Coxeter group with irreducible Coxeter graph
. The Coxeter group is
hyperbolic if and only if the following two conditions hold:
(Note: By removing a node, one might get a non-irreducible diagram even if the original diagram is connected. A reducible diagram defines a Coxeter group of finite type if and only if each irreducible component is of finite type, and a Coxeter group of affine type if and only if each irreducible component is of finite or affine type with at least one component of affine type.)
Proof:
We now show that . Because the signature of
is Lorentzian,
is the inside
of the standard light cone and has two components, the “future” component and the “past”
component. From the second condition of the theorem, each
lies on or inside the light
cone since the orthogonal hyperplane is non-timelike. Furthermore, all the
’s are future
pointing, which implies that the cone
lies in
, as had to be shown (a positive sum of
future pointing non spacelike vectors is non-spacelike). This concludes the proof of the theorem.
In particular, this theorem is useful for determining all hyperbolic Coxeter groups once one knows the list of
all finite and affine ones. To illustrate its power, consider the Coxeter diagram of Figure 8,
with 8 nodes on the loop and one extra node attached to it (we shall see later that it is called
).
The bilinear form is given by
and is of Lorentzian signature. If one removes the node labelled 9, one gets the affine diagram Consider now the same diagram, with one more node in the loop (). In that case, if one removes
one of the middle nodes 4 or 5, one gets the Coxeter group
, which is neither finite nor affine. Hence,
is not hyperbolic.
Using the two conditions in the theorem, one can in fact provide the list of all irreducible
hyperbolic Coxeter groups. The striking fact about this classification is that hyperbolic Coxeter
groups exist only in ranks , and, moreover, for
there is only a finite
number. In the
case, on the other hand, there exists an infinite class of hyperbolic
Coxeter groups. In Figure 15
we give a general form of the Coxeter graphs corresponding to all
rank 3 hyperbolic Coxeter groups, and in Tables 3 – 9 we give the complete classification for
.
Note that the inverse metric , which gives the scalar products of the fundamental weights, has
only negative entries in the hyperbolic case since the scalar product of two future-pointing non-spacelike
vectors is strictly negative (it is zero only when the vectors are both null and parallel, which does not occur
here).
One can also show [116, 107
] that in the hyperbolic case, the Tits cone
coincides with the future
light cone. (In fact, it coincides with either the future light cone or the past light cone. We assume that the
time orientation in
has been chosen as in the proof of the theorem, so that the Tits cone coincides with
the future light cone.) This is at the origin of an interesting connection with discrete reflection groups in
hyperbolic space (which justifies the terminology). One may realize hyperbolic space
as the upper
sheet of the hyperboloid
in
. Since the Coxeter group is a subgroup of
, it
leaves this sheet invariant and defines a group of reflections in
. The fundamental reflections are
reflections through the hyperplanes in hyperbolic space obtained by taking the intersection of the
Minkowskian hyperplanes
with hyperbolic space. These hyperplanes bound the
fundamental region, which is the domain to the positive side of each of these hyperplanes. The
fundamental region is a simplex with vertices
, where
are the intersection points of
the lines
with hyperbolic space. This intersection is at infinity in hyperbolic space if
is lightlike. The fundamental region has finite volume but is compact only if the
are
timelike.
Thus, we see that the hyperbolic Coxeter groups are the reflection groups in hyperbolic space with a
fundamental domain which (i) is a simplex, and which (ii) has finite volume. The fact that the fundamental
domain is a simplex ( vectors in
) follows from our geometric construction where it is assumed
that the
vectors
form a basis of
.
The group relevant to pure gravity in four dimensions is easily verified to be
hyperbolic.
For general information, we point out the following facts:
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