Orthogonal involutions and totally singular quadratic forms in characteristic two (Q1679199)

Let \((A,\sigma)\) be a central simple algebra over a field \(F\) of characteristic two with orthogonal involution \(\sigma\) on \(A\). Define \(\text{Alt}(A,\sigma)=\{x-\sigma(x)\mid x\in A\}\), and \(S(A,\sigma)=\{x\in A\mid\sigma(x)x\in F\oplus\text{Alt}(A,\sigma)\}\). For each \(x\in S(A,\sigma)\), there is a unique \(\alpha\in F\) such that \(\sigma(x)x+\alpha\in\text{Alt}(A,\sigma)\). The mapping \(q_{\sigma}:S(A,\sigma)\to F\) assigns \(\alpha\) to \(x\). In this article, it is shown first that ``\(\sigma\) is direct'', ``\(q_{\sigma}\) is anisotropic'', and ``\(S(A,\sigma)\) is a field'' are equivalent. Let \(t\) be the transpose involution on \(M_{n}(F)\), it is shown that when \(A\) is of degree \(n\) and splits, then \(A(\sigma)\cong(M_{n}(F),t)\) if and only if \(q_{\sigma}\cong\langle1\rangle_{q}\perp(n^{2}-1)\times\langle0\rangle_{q}\). Applications to totally decomposable algebras with orthogonal involution are studied.