Automorphisms of Cayley algebras (Q2534209)

The simplest automorphisms of a Cayley algebra are those which leave elementwise invariant the elements of a quaternion subalgebra and take the elements orthogonal to the underlying subspace of the quaternion algebra into their negatives. Such automorphisms are the only ones which are involutory, that is, of order two. The paper studies the decomposition of any automorphism into a product of involutory automorphisms, under the hypothesis that the characteristic is not 2 or 3. It is shown that any automorphism can be expressed as the product of at most three involutory automorphisms and that there exist Cayley algebras which have automorphisms which can not be expressed as products of less than three automorphisms of order 2. However, if the characteristic polynomial of the linear transformation induced on the underlying vector space of the algebra by the automorphism is divisible by \((x-1)^3\), then the automorphism is the product of two involutory ones. This is also true if the automorphism leaves invariant a quaternion subalgebra (even if the characteristic is 3); hence, in particular, for Cayley division algebras over a real closed field. When the base field is algebraically closed any automorphism is the product of at most two involutory automorphisms.