Products of transvections in one conjugacy class of the symplectic group over the \(p\)-adic numbers (Q5935369)

Let \(f\) be a nonsingular alternating bilinear form on a finite dimensional vector space \(V\) over a field \(K\), and let \(Sp:=Sp(V,f).\) If \(\lambda\) is a nonzero element of \(K\), then a \(\lambda\)-transvection is a transvection of the form \(T=I+\lambda vf(v,.)\). The \(\lambda\)-transvections form a conjugacy class in \(Sp\). It is known that all elements of \(Sp\) are products of transvections and \textit{F. Knüppel} [Forum Math. 5, No. 5, 441-458 (1993; Zbl 0789.51016)] has given bounds on the number of transvections required when all but one of them is a \(\lambda\)-transvection for a given \(\lambda\). In the present paper the authors show that for the field \(K=\mathbb{Q}_{p}\) of \(p\)-adic numbers for an odd prime \(p\), it is possible to choose all the factors as \(\lambda\)-transvections. They find the exact minimal number of \(\lambda\)-transvections needed to represent transformations with small path dimension, and upper bounds on the number for the general case.