English

Can we recover an integral quadratic form by representing all its subforms?

Number Theory 2023-09-25 v2

Abstract

Let o\mathfrak o be the ring of integers of a totally real number field. If ff is a quadratic form over o\mathfrak o and gg is another quadratic form over o\mathfrak o which represents all proper subforms of ff, does gg represent ff? We show that if gg is indefinite, then gg indeed represents ff. However, when ff is positive definite and indecomposable, then there exists a gg which represents all proper subforms of ff but not ff itself. Along the way we give a new characterization of positive definite decomposable quadratic forms over o\mathfrak o and a number-field generalization of the finiteness theorem of representations of quadratic forms by quadratic forms over Z\mathbb Z which asserts that given any infinite set S\mathscr S of classes of positive definite integral quadratic forms over o\mathfrak o of a fixed rank, there exists a finite subset S0\mathscr S_0 of S\mathscr S with the property that a positive definite quadratic form over o\mathfrak o represents all classes in S\mathscr S if and only if it represents all classes in S0\mathscr S_0.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.08957,
  title  = {Can we recover an integral quadratic form by representing all its subforms?},
  author = {Wai Kiu Chan and Byeong-Kweon Oh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.08957},
  year   = {2023}
}