The Hopf condition for bilinear forms over arbitrary fields
Rings and Algebras
2007-05-23 v1 Algebraic Geometry
Algebraic Topology
Abstract
We settle an old question about the existence of certain "sums-of-squares" formulas over a field F (which are the simplest examples of composition formulas for quadratic forms). A classical theorem says that if such a formula exists over a field of characteristic 0, then certain binomial coefficients must be even. We use motivic cohomology to prove that the same result holds in characteristic p.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.math/0309197,
title = {The Hopf condition for bilinear forms over arbitrary fields},
author = {Daniel Dugger and Daniel C. Isaksen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0309197},
year = {2007}
}