Generalized Polar Decompositions on Lie Groups with Involutive Automorphisms

The polar decomposition, a well-known algorithm for decomposing real matrices as the product of a positive semidefinite matrix and an orthogonal matrix, is intimately related to involutive automorphisms of Lie groups and the subspace decomposition they induce. Such generalized polar decompositions, depending on the choice of the involutive automorphism σ , always exist near the identity although frequently they can be extended to larger portions of the underlying group. In this paper, first of all we provide an alternative proof to the local existence and uniqueness result of the generalized polar decomposition. What is new in our approach is that we derive differential equations obeyed by the two factors and solve them analytically, thereby providing explicit Lie-algebra recurrence relations for the coefficients of the series expansion. Second, we discuss additional properties of the two factors. In particular, when σ is a Cartan involution, we prove that the subgroup factor obeys similar optimality properties to the orthogonal polar factor in the classical matrix setting both locally and globally, under suitable assumptions on the Lie group G . September 12, 2000. Final version received: April 16, 2001.