More examples of non-rational adjoint groups (Q405848)

A recursive construction is given to produce for each positive \(n\) a field \(k_n\) of characteristic zero together with a quadratic form \(q_n\) in the \(n\)-th power of the fundamental ideal in the Witt ring of quadratic forms over \(k_n\), such that the corresponding adjoint group \(\text{PSO}(q_n)\) is not stably rational. The proof is based on the computation by \textit{A. S. Merkurjev} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 84, 189--213 (1996; Zbl 0884.20029)] of the R-equivalence classes of adjoint classical groups. The recursion starts with an example of Merkurjev that has non-trivial discriminant. The paper generalizes work of \textit{P. Gille} [J. Algebra 193, No. 2, 728--747 (1997; Zbl 0911.14026)], who produced an example with trivial discriminant.