The Arason invariant of orthogonal involutions of degree 12 and 8, and quaternionic subgroups of the Brauer group (Q273880)

In the paper under review, the authors study an analogue of the Arason invariant for certain Hermitian forms and orthogonal involutions, and calculate it explicitly in various cases, in particular use it to associate to every orthogonal involution \(\sigma\) with trivial discriminant and trivial Clifford invariant over a central simple algebra \(A\) of even co-index an element \(f_3(\sigma)\) in the subgroup \(F^{\times} \cdot [A]\) of \(H^3(F,\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}(2))\). In the classical case, the Arason invariant is a degree 3 Galois cohomology class with \(\mu_2\) coefficients attached to an even-dimensional quadratic form with trivial discriminant and trivial Clifford invariant. It can be described in terms of the Rost invariant of a split Spin group [\textit{M.-A. Knus} et al., The book of involutions. With a preface by J. Tits. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (1998; Zbl 0955.16001)]. Although it is not always possible to extend this invariant to the more general setting of orthogonal involutions, one may use the Rost invariant of some possibly non-split Spin groups to define relative and absolute Arason invariants (called simply the Arason invariants by the authors) for some orthogonal involutions, as explained by [\textit{E. Bayer-Fluckiger} and \textit{R. Parimala}, Ann. Math. (2) 147, No. 3, 651--693 (1998; Zbl 0909.20029)]. For a central simple algebra \((A, \sigma)\) with orthogonal involution over a field \(F\) of characteristic different from \(2\), the Arason invariant \(e_3(\sigma)\), when defined, belongs to the quotient \[ H^3(F,\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}(2))/F^{\times} \cdot[A], \] where \(F^{\times} \cdot [A]\) denotes the subgroup consisting of cup products \((\lambda) \cdot [A]\), for \(\lambda \in F^{\times}\), and \([A]\) the Brauer class of \(A\). The authors give a general formula for computing the Arason invariant of an algebra with involution admitting a rank \(2\) factor. It is shown that the Arason invariant is not always represented by a cohomology class of order \(2\), and the authors define a new invariant \(f_3(\sigma) \in H^3(F,\mu_2)\), attached to any orthogonal involution for which the Arason invariant is defined, and which vanishes if and only if the Arason invariant is represented by a cohomology class of order \(2\). This invariant is zero if the algebra is split, or of degree \(\leq 10\), which explains why it is important to study the degree 12 in detail. The authors prove that a degree \(12\) algebra with orthogonal involution \((A, \sigma)\), having trivial discriminant and trivial Clifford invariant, admits a non-unique decomposition as a sum of three degree \(4\) algebras with orthogonal involution of trivial discriminant. This extends the results previously obtained by \textit{S. Garibaldi} and \textit{A. Quéguiner-Mathieu} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 137, No. 4, 1215--1222 (2009; Zbl 1172.16018)]. Then the authors restrict to those algebras with involution of degree \(12\) for which the Arason invariant is defined, and prove that \(e_3(\sigma)\) detects isotropy of \(\sigma\), and vanishes if and only if \(\sigma\) is hyperbolic. Finally, the authors give a necessary and sufficient condition for the vanishing of \(f_3(\sigma)\) in degree \(12\), in terms of decomposition groups of \((A,\sigma)\), and extend the definition of the Arason invariant in degree \(8\) to index \(2\) algebras with involution of trivial discriminant, and such that the two components of the Clifford algebra have index \(2\).