Behaviour of loops in a canonical coordinate system (Q807755)

In traditional Lie group theory, a canonical coordinate system (of the first kind) for a local Lie group is a diffeomorphism of a suitable neighborhood of the identity onto an open neighborhood U of 0 in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\) such that with the transported local group multiplication (x,y)\(\mapsto xy: U\times U\to {\mathbb{R}}^ n\), each local one-parameter subgroup has the form \(t\mapsto t\cdot x: ]-\epsilon,\epsilon [\to U\) with an \(x\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) and an \(\epsilon >0\). This article deals with local loops instead of groups which have all the properties of local groups except for associativity. This amounts to the prescription of a map (x,y)\(\mapsto xy: U\times U\to {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) with an open neighborhood U of 0 such that \(0x=x0=x\) and the equations \(ax=c\) and \(xb=c\) permit unique solutions for sufficiently small a, b and c. Local one-parameter groups may not exist. However, the author gives a lucid and direct proof of Shelekov's theorem of the existence of a local coordinate system in the sense that, after suitable transformations via a diffeomorphism, one has \(xx=2x\) for all \(x\in U\). The proofs are such that for a local loop of class \(C^ k\) all maps stay within class \(C^ k\). Canonical coordinate systems are shown to be unique up to a linear automorphism of \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\).