Is it the Cartan, Coxeter or Gram matrix?
If you have a (numerical) Grothendieck group, it comes equipped with an Euler form and usually it has a Serre automorphism too. If the numerical Grothendieck group happens to be finitely generated (i.e. isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}^n$ for some $n$), then choosing a basis you can express the Euler form (which is a bilinear form) and the Serre automorphism as a matrix in terms of this basis. In that case the terminology that is used in the literature is:
- Euler form $\langle-,-\rangle$
- Gram matrix
- Cartan matrix
- Serre automorphism $\mathbb{S}$
- Coxeter matrix
The Serre automorphism is sometimes called Coxeter transformation too.
If we denote the Cartan–Gram matrix for the Euler form by $A$ and the Coxeter matrix for the Serre automorphism by $C$, then there is a strong relationship between the two.
Proposition We have that $$ C=-A^{-1}A^{\mathrm{t}}. $$
Proof. Because $\langle-,-\rangle$ is nondegenerate, we have $\det A\neq 0$, and $$ \begin{aligned} \langle y,x\rangle &=y^{\mathrm{t}}Ax \\ &=x^{\mathrm{t}}A^{\mathrm{t}}y \\ &=-x^{\mathrm{t}}A(-A^{-1}A^{\mathrm{t}})y \\ &=\left\langle x,(-A^{-1}A^{\mathrm{t}})y \right\rangle \end{aligned} $$ so we get the desired relationship by nondegeneracy. $\blacksquare$
To finish this blogpost, let's give the two easiest examples: curves and quivers.
Example 1 The numerical Grothendieck group of a smooth projective curve $C$ is generated by $[k(p)]$ and $[\mathcal{O}_C]$. You can easily compute using Riemann–Roch that $$ A= \begin{pmatrix} 0 & -1 \\ 1 & 1-g \end{pmatrix} $$ and $$ C= \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 2g-2 \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix}, $$ where $g$ is the genus of the curve.
Example 2 The (numerical) Grothendieck group of a path algebra for an acyclic quiver has two obvious choices of basis: the simples, and the projectives. We will use the projectives here. Just note there is a strong connection between the Serre functor and Auslander–Reiten triangles, see e.g. theorem A of Reiten–Van den Bergh, Noetherian hereditary abelian categories.
If we take the Dynkin quiver $\mathrm{D}_4$ as an example, and we orient the arrows from left to right, then $$ A= \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\ 0 & 1 & 1 & 1 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix} $$ and $$ C= \begin{pmatrix} 0 & 1 & 1 & 0 \\ 1 & 0 & 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \\ -1 & -1 & -1 & -1 \end{pmatrix}. $$