Some remarks on invariants

The demand to know the structure of functionally independent invariants of tensor fields arises in many problems of theoretical and mathematical physics, for instance for the construction of interacting higher-order tensor field actions. In mathematical terms the problem can be formulated as follows. Given a semi-simple finite-dimensional Lie algebra g and a g-module V, one may ask about the structure of the sub-ring of g-invariants inside the ring freely generated by the module. We point out how some information about the ring of invariants may be obtained by studying an extended Lie algebra. Numerous examples are given, with particular focus on the difficult problem of classifying invariants of a self-dual 5-form in 10 dimensions.