The étale Tits process of Jordan algebras revisited. (Q1427380)

The étale Tits process gives a Jordan-theoretical method to obtain degree \(3\) simple associative algebras with involutions of the second kind. It starts with a cubic étale algebra \(E\) and a quadratic étale algebra \(L\), both over a ground field \(k\), together with invertible elements \(u\in E\) and \(b\in L\) having the same norm; then it produces a central simple Jordan algebra \(J=J(E,L,u,b)\) defined on the vector space \(E\times (E\otimes_kL)\), which must be the Jordan algebra of symmetric elements \(H(B,\tau)\) of a degree \(3\) simple associative algebra with an involution of the second kind. The first purpose of the paper under review is to prove an important converse to this process: given an embedding \(\iota:E\rightarrow H(B,\tau)\), with \(E\) and \((B,\tau)\) as before, it is shown that there are suitable \(L,u,b\) as above such that \(\iota\) extends to an isomorphism \(J(E,L,u,b)\cong H(B,\tau)\). It must be stressed that no restriction on the ground field is imposed. Over fields of characteristic \(\neq 2,3\), this follows too from results by \textit{M.-A. Knus, A. S. Merkjurev, M. Rost} and \textit{J.-P. Tignol} [The book of involutions, Colloquium Publications. American Mathematical Society. 44 (1998; Zbl 0955.16001)]. Also, for division algebras it follows from results by \textit{H. P.~Petersson} and \textit{M. L. Racine} [J. Algebra 98, 244--279 (1986; Zbl 0589.17016)]. Two applications are given of this extension theorem. First, necessary and sufficient conditions are given for an isomorphism between étale cubic algebras \(E_1\cong E_2\) to be extendable to an isomorphism between Jordan algebras \(J(E_i,L_i,u_i,b_i)\), \(i=1,2\). Second, an invariant called `norm class' is attached to any embedding \(E\rightarrow H(B,\tau)\). It is proved that, given two such embeddings \(\iota,\iota':E\rightarrow H(B,\tau)\), there exists an automorphism \(\varphi\) of \(H(B,\tau)\) such that \(\varphi\circ \iota=\iota'\) if and only if \(\iota\) and \(\iota'\) have the same norm class. Thus, the presence of different norm classes is the obstruction to the validity of the Skolem-Noether Theorem.