Products of two involutions in orthogonal and symplectic groups (Q6082236)

An element of a group is called bireflectional when it is the product of two involutions of the group, i.e., elements of order \(1\) or \(2\) and bireflectional elements are known to be conjugated to their inverses. It is also known that all elements of orthogonal groups of quadratic forms are bireflectional. For fields of characteristic not \(2\) see [\textit{M. J. Wonenburger}, J. Math. Mech. 16, 327--338 (1966; Zbl 0168.03403)] and for fields of characteristic \(2\) see [\textit{R. Gow}, J. Algebra 71, 583--591 (1981; Zbl 0464.20029)]. The characterization of the bireflectional elements of the unitary groups over fields of characteristic different from \(2\) was given in the PhD thesis of \textit{F. Bünger} [Involutionen als Erzeugende in unitären Gruppen, PhD thesis, Universität zu Kiel, 1997]. In general, for symplectic groups over fields with characteristic different from \(2\), there are elements that are conjugated to their inverse but are not bireflectional, in contrast to the case of characteristic \(2\). In this paper, the author characterizes the bireflectional elements of symplectic groups in terms of Wall's invariants over fields of characteristic different from \(2\). This result is mentioned without proof in Bünger's PhD thesis, and attributed to K. Nielsen (see reference [56] in [F. Bünger, loc. cit.]). Many of the results and methods involve the classification of the conjugacy classes in the orthogonal and symplectic groups in [\textit{G. E. Wall}, J. Aust. Math. Soc. 3, 1--62 (1963; Zbl 0122.28102)]. The author mentions an error in the proof of Theorem 6 of the paper by M. J. Wonenburger [loc. cit.], which was pointed out by K. Nielsen to the author. He also provides a simplified proof of Wonenburger's corresponding result for orthogonal groups and general linear groups. Some open problems are presented.