The Poincaré group as a Drinfel’d double

Abstract

The eight nonisomorphic Drinfel’d double (DD) structures for the Poincaré Lie group in (2 + 1) dimensions are explicitly constructed in the kinematical basis. Also, the two existing DD structures for a non-trivial central extension of the (1 + 1) Poincaré group are also identified and constructed, while in (3 + 1) dimensions no Poincaré DD structure does exist. Each of the DD structures here presented has an associated canonical quasitriangular Poincaré -matrix whose properties are analysed. Some of these -matrices give rise to coisotropic Poisson homogeneous spaces with respect to the Lorentz subgroup, and their associated Poisson Minkowski spacetimes are constructed. Two of these (2 + 1) noncommutative DD Minkowski spacetimes turn out to be quotients by a Lorentz Poisson subgroup: the first one corresponds to the double of with trivial Lie bialgebra structure, and the second one gives rise to a quadratic noncommutative Poisson Minkowski spacetime. With these results, the explicit construction of DD structures for all Lorentzian kinematical groups in (1 + 1) and (2 + 1) dimensions is completed, and the connection between (anti-)de Sitter and Poincaré -matrices through the vanishing cosmological constant limit is also analysed.