In mathematics, an adelic algebraic group is a topological group defined by an algebraic group G over a number field K, and the adele ring A = A(K) of K. It consists of the points of G having values in A; the definition of the appropriate topology is straightforward only in case G is a linear algebraic group. In the case of G an abelian variety it presents a technical obstacle, though it is known that the concept is potentially useful in connection with Tamagawa numbers. Adelic algebraic groups are widely used in number theory, particularly for the theory of automorphic representations, and the arithmetic of quadratic forms .

In case G is a linear algebraic group, it is an affine algebraic variety in affine N-space. The topology on the adelic algebraic group G(A) is taken to be the subspace topology in A^N, the Cartesian product of N copies of the adele ring.

An important example, the idele group I(K), is the case of G = GL₁. Here the set of ideles (correctly, idèles) consists of the invertible adeles; but the topology on the idele group is not their topology as a subset of the adeles. Instead, considering that GL₁ lies in two-dimensional affine space as the 'hyperbola' defined parametrically by

{(t, t⁻¹)},

the topology correctly assigned to the idele group is that induced by inclusion in A²; composing with a projection, we see that the ideles carry a finer topology than the subspace topology from A.

Inside A^N, the product K^N lies as a discrete subgroup. This means that G(K) is a discrete subgroup of G(A), also. In the case of the idele group, the quotient group

I(A)/I(K)

is the idele class group. It is closely related to (though larger than) the ideal class group. In fact the idele class group is a compact group; the proof of this is essentially equivalent to the finiteness of the class number.

The study of the Galois cohomology of idele class groups is a central matter in class field theory. Characters of the idele class group, now usually called Hecke characters , give rise to the most basic class of L-functions.

For more general G, the Tamagawa number is defined (or indirectly computed) as the measure of

G(A)/G(K).

Tsuneo Tamagawa 's observation was that, starting from an invariant differential form ω on G, defined over K, the measure involved was well-defined: while ω could be replaced by cω with c a non-zero element of K, the product formula for valuations in K is reflected by the independence from c of the measure of the quotient, for the product measure constructed from ω on each effective factor. The computation of Tamagawa numbers for semisimple groups contains important parts of classical quadratic form theory.

History of the terminology

Historically the idèles were introduced first in the mid-1930s, by Claude Chevalley. This was to formulate class field theory for infinite extensions in terms of topological groups. Shortly afterwards the adèles (additive idèles) were used by André Weil, to formulate a proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem. 'Adèle' being a French girls' name, this joke was not acceptable to some, who preferred the term répartitions. The general construction of adelic algebraic groups in the 1950s followed in short order the algebraic group theory founded by Armand Borel and Harish-Chandra, and at this point the terminology became fixed.

See also: Weil conjecture on Tamagawa numbers .