Dimension of compact groups and their representations

Abstract

In Pontrjagin's theory of duality for compact abelian groups, the following theorem is known : Let G be a compact abelian group, G* the dual group. Then the topological dimension of G, in the sense of Lebesgue, is equal to the rank of discrete abelian group G*. It was Prof. T. Tannaka who has called my attention to the lack of corresponding theorem in non-commutative case. I intend to give, in this note, a theorem of this kind in the following form: THEOREM A. Let G be an arbitrary compact group, G the aggregate of continuous finite dimensional representstions of G, C[ G ] the algebra over the complex numbers C generated by the coefficients of representations in G, i.e., the representative ring of G in the sense of C. Chevalley^. Then the topological dimension of G, in the sense of Lebesgue, is equal to the transcendental degree of C[G] over C.