Weight decomposition of $\mathfrak{sl}_d(\mathbb R)$ with respect to the adjoint representation of $\mathfrak{so}(p,q)$

Abstract

In this concise article, we compute the weight decomposition of $\mathfrak{sl}_d(\mathbb R)$ with respect to the adjoint representation of $\mathfrak{so}(p,q)$, where $d=p+q$ and demonstrate in detail that $\mathfrak{sl}_d(\mathbb R)$ comprises two irreducible $\mathfrak{so}(p,q)$-invariant subspaces. This can be employed to establish the well-known fact that the identity component of $\mathrm{SO}(p,q)$ is a maximal connected subgroup of $\mathrm{SL}_d(\mathbb R)$.