On continuous preservation of norms and areas (Q1262479)

Fix a positive integer n and define \(\phi:{\mathbb{R}}^ n\times {\mathbb{R}}^ n\to {\mathbb{R}}\) by \(\phi (a,b)=\| a\|^ 2\| b\|^ 2-(a\cdot b)^ 2;\) \(\phi\) (a,b) is the square of the area of the parallelogram spanned by a,b. The following is proved (among others): 1. For \(T:{\mathbb{R}}^ n\to {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) the following two conditions (i) and (ii) are equivalent: (i) \(| T(a)\cdot T(b)| =| a\cdot b|\) for all \(a,b\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n;\) (ii) \(\phi (T(a),T(b))=\phi (a,b),\) and \(T(a)\cdot T(b)=0\) iff \(a\cdot b=0,\) for all \(a,b\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n.\) 2. There are discontinuous bijections \(T:{\mathbb{R}}^ n\to {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) fulfilling (i) and there is a discontinuous \(T:{\mathbb{R}}^ n\to {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) fulfilling (i) which is not a bijection. 3. If \(T:{\mathbb{R}}^ n\to {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) is continuous and fulfils (i) then T is an orthogonal transformation.