English

Frame eversion and contextual geometric rigidity

Functional Analysis 2026-01-21 v2 Mathematical Physics Combinatorics math.MP Operator Algebras

Abstract

We prove rigidity results describing contextually-constrained maps defined on Grassmannians and manifolds of ordered independent line tuples in finite-dimensional vector or Hilbert spaces. One statement in the spirit of the Fundamental Theorem of Projective Geometry classifies maps between full Grassmannians of two nn-dimensional Hilbert spaces, n3n\ge 3, preserving dimension and lattice operations for pairs with commuting orthogonal projections, as precisely those induced by semilinear injections unique up to scaling. In a different but related direction, denote the manifolds of ordered orthogonal (linearly-independent) nn-tuples of lines in an nn-dimensional Hilbert space VV by F(V)\mathbb{F}^{\perp}(V) (respectively F(V)\mathbb{F}(V)) and, for partitions π\pi of the set {1..n}\{1..n\}, call two tuples π\pi-linked if the spans along π\pi-blocks agree. A Wigner-style rigidity theorem proves that the symmetric maps F(Cn)F(Cn)\mathbb{F}^{\perp}(\mathbb{C}^n)\to \mathbb{F}(\mathbb{C}^n), n3n\ge 3 respecting π\pi-linkage are precisely those induced by semilinear injections, hence by linear or conjugate-linear maps if also assumed measurable. On the other hand, in the F(Cn)\mathbb{F}(\mathbb{C}^n)-defined analogue the only other possibility is a qualitatively new type of purely-contextual-global symmetry transforming a tuple (i)i(\ell_i)_i of lines into ((jij))i\left(\left(\bigoplus_{j\ne i}\ell_j\right)^{\perp}\right)_i.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.11455,
  title  = {Frame eversion and contextual geometric rigidity},
  author = {Alexandru Chirvasitu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.11455},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

v2 adds Remark 1.11 and Lemma 1.12 and expands the proof of Theorem 1.10; 11 pages + references