Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Over a field of characteristic 0 certain of the simple Lie algebras have a root theory, namely those called “split” in Jacobson's book (3). We shall assume some familiarity with the subject matter of this book. Then the finite-dimensional representations of these Lie algebras have a weight theory. Our purpose here is to present a kind of weight theory for the representations of these Lie algebras when their ground field is the real numbers, and when the representation comes from a unitary group representation.