Classifying nonsingular quadratic forms of rank three

Azumaya algebras of rank four descent theory discriminant orthogonal group quadratic forms of rank one quadratic forms over commutative rings Witt invariant

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General ternary and quaternary quadratic forms; forms of more than two variables (11E20) General commutative ring theory (13A99)

Review text

For a commutative ring \(R\) let \(m_ 2(R)=\{x\in R : x^ 2=1\}\) and let \(\text{sl}_ 2(R)\) be the matrices in \(M_ 2(R)\) of trace zero. Let \(-q\) be the quadratic form given on \(\text{sl}_ 2(R)\) by the determinant so that \(q(X_ 1,X_ 2,X_ 3)=X_ 1X_ 2+X^ 2_ 3\) in a suitable basis of \(\text{sl}_ 2(R)\). Using linear algebra arguments the author shows that the orthogonal group of \((\text{sl}_ 2(R),q)\) is isomorphic to \(\text{Aut }M_ 2(R)\times m_ 2(R)\) and the special orthogonal group of \((\text{sl}_ 2(R),q)\) is isomorphic to \(\text{Aut }M_ 2(R)\). - As this holds over all commutative rings, descent theory is applied to get quickly the classification of all nonsingular quadratic forms of rank three in terms of Azumaya algebras of rank four and nonsingular quadratic forms of rank one.

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