A Prolog assisted search for new simple Lie algebras

Abstract

We describe some recent computer investigations with the ‘Constraint Logic Programming over Finite Domains’ library in the Prolog programming environment to search for new simple Lie algebras over the field GF ⁡ ( 2 ) \operatorname {GF}(2) of 2 2 elements. Motivated by a paper of Grishkov et al., we specifically look for those with a thin decomposition, and we settle one of their conjectures. We extrapolate from our results the existence of two new infinite families of simple Lie algebras, in addition to finding seven new sporadic examples in dimension 31 31 . We also better contextualise some previously discovered simple algebras, putting them into families which do not seem to have ever appeared in the literature, and give an updated table of those currently known.