ADDITIVE FAMILIES OF INVARIANTS OF SKEWSYMMETRIC TENSORS

Abstract

Let d be a positive integer and F be a field of characteristic 0. Suppose that for each positive integer n, I _n is a polynomial invariant of the usual action of GL_n (F) on Λ^d(Fⁿ), such that for t ϵ Λ^d(F ^k) and s ϵ Λ^d(F ^l), I _{k + l} (t l s) = I _k(t)I _t (s), where t ⊥ s is defined in §1.4. Then we say that {I_n} is an additive family of invariants of the skewsymmetric tensors of degree d, or, briefly, an additive family of invariants. If not all the I_n are constant we say that the family is non-trivial. We show that in each even degree d there is a non-trivial additive family of invariants, but that this is not so for any odd d. These results are analogous to those in our paper [3] for symmetric tensors. Our proofs rely on the symbolic method for representing invariants of skewsymmetric tensors. To keep this paper self-contained we expound some of that theory, but for the proofs we refer to the book [2] of Grosshans, Rota and Stein.