Clifford algebras as twisted group algebras and the Arf invariant (Q1659523)

The article seems to be meant mostly for algebraists. However, the authors provide in the beginning a wonderful brief introduction to the main concepts used later on in the text in order to make it available even for non-specialists. Namely, they revise the notion of group grading, graded-commutative and graded-division algebras, previously used in this context and thus introduce the alternating bicharacter of the corresponding group, which plays an important role in the following sections. Next, Clifford algebras are presented as twisted group algebras and the Arf invariant of a quadratic form (with values in the field of two elements) is introduced in a rather intuitive manner. Having this arsenal at their disposal, the authors provide several interesting theorems on twisted group algebras associated with multiplicative quadratic forms, which happen to be isomorphic to real Clifford algebras. Hence, in the final section, which contains the main results of the article, this isomorphism is used for an alternative derivation of the full classification table of real Clifford algebras based on the Arf invariant of the corresponding quadratic form, for which a convenient working formula is provided as well.