Plain Representations of Lie Algebras

In this paper we study representations of finite dimensionalLie algebras. In this case representations are not necessarilycompletely reducible. As the general problem is known to beof enormous complexity, we restrict ourselves to representationsthat behave particularly well on Levi subalgebras. We call suchrepresentations plain (Definition 1.1). Informally, we showthat the theory of plain representations of a given Lie algebraL is equivalent to representation theory of finitely many finitedimensional associative algebras, also non-semisimple. The senseof this is to distinguish representations of Lie algebras thatare of complexity comparable with that of representations ofassociative algebras. Non-plain representations are intrinsicallymuch more complex than plain ones. We view our work as a steptoward understanding this complexity phenomenon. We restrict ourselves also to perfect Lie algebras L, that is,such that L = [L, L]. In our main results we assume that L isperfect and sl₂-free (which means that L has no quotient isomorphicto sl₂). The ground field F is always assumed to be algebraicallyclosed and of characteristic 0.