Discretization of SU(2) and the orthogonal group using icosahedral symmetries and the golden numbers

DOI10.1080/00927872.2017.1388815MaRDI QIDQ4570922zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Robert V. Moody, Jun Morita

Publication date 10 July 2018

Published in Communications in Algebra (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.04910

zbMATH Keywords

quaternionsicosahedral symmetrynon-crystallographic root systemsdiscretization of \(\mathrm{SU}(2)\)golden numbersinfinite reflection groups

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Reflection and Coxeter groups (group-theoretic aspects) (20F55) Discrete approximations in optimal control (49M25) Orthogonal and unitary groups in metric geometry (51F25) Root systems (17B22)

Abstract: The vertices of the four dimensional $120$-cell form a non-crystallographic root system whose corresponding symmetry group is the Coxeter group $H_4$. There are two special coordinate representations of this root system in which they and their corresponding Coxeter groups involve only rational numbers and the golden ratio $au$. The two are related by the conjugation $aumapstoa{u}^{\prime }=-1/au$. This paper investigates what happens when the two root systems are combined and the group generated by both versions of $H_4$ is allowed to operate on them. The result is a new, but infinite, `root system' $Sigma$ which itself turns out to have a natural structure of the unitary group $SU(2,mathcalR)$ over the ring $mathcalR=mathbbZ[frac12,au]$ (called here golden numbers). Acting upon it is the naturally associated infinite reflection group $H^{infty}$, which we prove is of index $2$ in the orthogonal group $O(4,mathcalR)$. The paper makes extensive use of the quaternions over $mathcalR$ and leads to highly structured discretized filtration of $SU(2)$. We use this to offer a simple and effective way to approximate any element of $SU(2)$ to any degree of accuracy required using the repeated actions of just five fixed reflections, a process that may find application in computational methods in quantum mechanics.

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Cites work

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• A Clifford algebraic framework for Coxeter group theoretic computations.
• Maximal subgroups of the Coxeter group \(W(H_4)\) and quaternions.
• Novel Kac-Moody-type affine extensions of non-crystallographic Coxeter groups
• Quasicrystals and icosians

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