ORBIT CLOSURES IN THE WITT ALGEBRA AND ITS DUAL SPACE

Abstract

Working over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p > 3, we calculate the orbit closures in the Witt algebra W under the action of its automorphism group G. We also outline how the same techniques can be used to determine closures of orbits of all heights except p - 1 (in which case we only obtain a conditional statement) in the dual space W* under the induced action of G. As a corollary we prove that the algebra of invariants k[W*]G is trivial.