English

On effective Witt decomposition and Cartan-Dieudonne theorem

Number Theory 2011-11-10 v2

Abstract

Let KK be a number field, and let FF be a symmetric bilinear form in 2N2N variables over KK. Let ZZ be a subspace of KNK^N. A classical theorem of Witt states that the bilinear space (Z,F)(Z,F) can be decomposed into an orthogonal sum of hyperbolic planes, singular, and anisotropic components. We prove the existence of such a decomposition of small height, where all bounds on height are explicit in terms of heights of FF and ZZ. We also prove a special version of Siegel's Lemma for a bilinear space, which provides a small-height orthogonal decomposition into one-dimensional subspaces. Finally, we prove an effective version of Cartan-Dieudonn{\'e} theorem. Namely, we show that every isometry σ\sigma of a regular bilinear space (Z,F)(Z,F) can be represented as a product of reflections of small heights with an explicit bound on heights in terms of heights of FF, ZZ, and σ\sigma.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0501282,
  title  = {On effective Witt decomposition and Cartan-Dieudonne theorem},
  author = {Lenny Fukshansky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0501282},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

16 pages, revised and corrected version, to appear in Canadian Journal of Mathematics