Hopf fibrations and Hurwitz-Radon numbers (Q517911)

The purpose of this expository paper published in the ``Mathematical Gems and Curiosities''-column is to present some results on Hopf-fibrations and Hurwitz-Radon numbers. The theory of Hopf fibrations was provoked by a work of \textit{H. Hopf} [Math. Ann. 104, 637--665 (1931; Zbl 0001.40703)]. Hopf fibrations are a construction representing \(S^3\) as a disjoint union of pairwise linked great circles. There exist four Hopf fibrations whose fibers, total spaces and bases are spheres. This work is a principal tool for the interpretation of the Hurwitz-Radon numbers. Content: The Hurwitz-Radon function, The Adams theorem about vector fields on spheres, The classical Hopf fibrations (fibrations of \(S^3\)), Higher-dimensional Hopf fibrations, Projection to Euclidean spaces, Affine Hopf fibrations (\(\mathbb{R}^n\) admits no affine Hopf fibration). An existence theorem: ``\(\mathbb{R}^n\) admits a fibration by \(p\)-dimensional pairwise skew affine subspaces if and only if \(p\leq\rho(n-\mu)-1\), where \(\rho:\mathbb{N}\to \mathbb{N}\) is a certain function''. The exposition is nicely structured and references to the literature are included.