Morse-Bott functions on orthogonal groups (Q2324518)

The paper deals with two types of functions \(f:O(n)\to\mathbb{R}\). The first type is of the form \(f(X)=f_{A,B}(X):= Tr(AXBX^\top)\) for given symmetric \(n\times n\) matrices \(A,B\). The second type is linear, i.e. \(f(X)=f_A(X):=Tr(A^\top X)\) for an arbitrary \(n\times n\) matrix \(A\). They show that these functions are Morse-Bott and investigate the critical loci. The results are used to give a new computation of the mod 2 Betti numbers of \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\).