Saturday, 21 October 2006

ra.rings and algebras - Calculating norms over a finite field (orthogonal groups).

I'm trying to work through calculating the order of orthogonal groups in characteristic $neq 2$. However there is one proof by induction used that i can't quite follow. Could someone help me understand where the formula for $z_{m+1}$ comes from and how we know $U$ must contain $2q-1$ vectors with norm $0$ and $q-1$ vectors of every non-zero norm in the following extract:




Let $z_m$ denote the number of non-zero isotropic vectors in an orthogonal space with dimension $2m$ or $2m+1$. We claim that:



$z_m = q^{2m}-1$ for dimension $2m+1$



$z_m = (q^m-1)(q^{m-1}+1)$ for plus type with dimension $2m$



$z_m = (q^m-1)(q^{m-1}-1)$ for minus type with dimension $2m$



For our inductive step we look at a $n+2$ dimensional space $V$ to ensure all spaces remain of the same type. Split V into the direct sum of $U$ and $W$ where $U$ is a $2$-dimensional space of plus type and $W$ is an $n$-dimensional space with the same type as $V$. Any isotopic vector in $V$ can be written as $u+w$ for isotropic vectors $uin U$ and $win W$. Either $u$ and $w$ both have norm $0$ (with one being non-zero) or $u$ has norm $lambda neq 0$ and $w$ has norm $-lambda$. Since $U$ contains $2q-1$ vectors of norm $0$ (including the zero vector) and $q-1$ vectors of every non-zero norm we count:



$z_{m+1}=(2q-1)(1+z_m)+(q-1)(q^n-1-z_m)-1$



The other three cases are similar.




Thanks

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