Some remarks on the Maslov index

Publication date 10 May 2021

Extensions, wreath products, and other compositions of groups (20E22) Algebraic theory of quadratic forms; Witt groups and rings (11E81) Witt groups of rings (19G12)

Abstract: It is a classical fact that Wall's index of a triplet of Lagrangians in a symplectic space over a field

k

defines a

2

-cocycle

m u_{W}

on the associated symplectic group with values in the Witt group of

k

. Moreover, modulo the square of the fundamental ideal this is a trivial

2

-cocycle. In this work we revisit this fact from the viewpoint of the theory of Sturm sequences and Sylvester matrices developed by J.~Barge and J.~Lannes in teir book Suites de Sturm, indice de Maslov et p'eriodicit'e de Bott, volume 267 of Progress in Mathematics. Birkh"auser Verlag, Basel, 2008. We define a refinement by a factor of

2

of Wall's cocycle and use the technology of Sylvester matrices to give an explicit formula for the coboundary associated to the mod

I^{2}

reduction of the cocycle which is valid for any field of characteristic different from

2

. Finally we explicitly compute the values of the coboundary on standard elements of the symplectic group.

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