Recovering the Picard group of quadratic algebras from Wood's binary quadratic forms (Q7009792)

The goal of this paper is to find a parametrization of the Picard group of a given quadratic algebra over a general base scheme \(\mathcal S\) in which 2 is not a zero divisor by a set of classes of quadratic forms over \(\mathcal S\). \textit{M. M. Wood} [Adv. Math. 226, No. 2, 1756--1771 (2011; Zbl 1262.11049)] established a set-theoretical bijection between isomorphism classes of primary binary quadratic forms over such a scheme \(\mathcal S\) and isomorphism classes of pairs \((\mathcal C,\mathcal M)\), where \(\mathcal C\) is a quadratic algebra over \(\mathcal S\) (that is, a locally free \(\mathcal O_{\mathcal S}\)-algebra of rank 2, where \(\mathcal O_{\mathcal S}\) denotes the structure sheaf of \(\mathcal S\)) and \(\mathcal M\) is an invertible \(\mathcal C\)-module. The approach here is to recover from Wood's bijection an explicit bijection between the Picard group of the quadratic algebra and a set of classes of primitive quadratic forms over \(\mathcal S\). An important preliminary step is to establish a classification of quadratic algebras over \(\mathcal S\), which is achieved here by using two invariants, the discriminant and the parity. For this purpose, a scheme-theoretic version of the notion of parity introduced over \(\mathbb Z\) by \textit{J. Towber} [Adv. Math. 36, 1--107 (1980; Zbl 0447.10025)] is given for both quadratic algebras and linear binary quadratic forms.