Rings with involution whose symmetric elements are central

Abstract

In a ring R with involution whose symmetric elements S are central, the skew-symmetric elements K form a Lie algebra over the commutative ring S. The classification of such rings which are 2-torsion free is equivalent to the classification of Lie algebras K over S equipped with a bilinear form f that is symmetric, invariant and satisfies [[x,y],z]=f(y,z)x−f(z,x)y. If S is a field of char ≠2, f≠0 and dimK>1 then K is a semisimple Lie algebra if and only if f is nondegenerate. Moreover, the derived algebra K′ is either the pure quaternions over S or a direct sum of mutually orthogonal abelian Lie ideals of dim≤2.