Primitive ideals: from abstract to concrete.

The set of primitive ideals of the
universal enveloping algebra of a complex
reductive Lie algebra has been determined in the
1970s and 1980s using a wide array of geometric
and algebraic methods. However, the ideals
themselves are not quite so easy to pin down. I
will review some classical results and present an
approach to an explicit, “hands-on” description
of primitive ideals based on noncommutative linear
algebra.