Product Lie group

The Cartesian product of Lie groups, with componentwise multiplication, is again a Lie group.
Product Lie group

Given Lie groups GG and HH (see ), their product Lie group is the manifold G×HG\times H with group structure

(g,h)(g,h)=(gg,hh),(g,h)1=(g1,h1). (g,h)\cdot(g',h')=(gg',hh'),\qquad (g,h)^{-1}=(g^{-1},h^{-1}).

With the product smooth structure, the multiplication and inversion maps are smooth, so G×HG\times H is a Lie group. The coordinate projections

prG:G×HG,prH:G×HH \mathrm{pr}_G:G\times H\to G,\qquad \mathrm{pr}_H:G\times H\to H

are smooth group homomorphisms (see ).

On the infinitesimal level, the Lie algebra satisfies

Lie(G×H)    Lie(G)Lie(H), \mathrm{Lie}(G\times H)\;\cong\;\mathrm{Lie}(G)\oplus \mathrm{Lie}(H),

compatibly with brackets (see and ). Under this identification, the exponential map (see ) splits:

expG×H(X,Y)=(expG(X),expH(Y)). \exp_{G\times H}(X,Y)=\big(\exp_G(X),\exp_H(Y)\big).

This construction is ubiquitous: representation theory often reduces statements about a product to separate statements about factors (compare with and ).