English

Normal Quaternionic Matrices and Finitely Generated Witt Rings

Rings and Algebras 2026-04-24 v4

Abstract

We present a new approach to verify the Elementary Type Conjecture for abstract Witt rings with small number of square classes. To do so, we make use of an abstract analogue of the 2-torsion part of the Brauer group, also verifying a certain case of the Arason-Pfister Hauptsatz in this setting. We develop a description of the entire structure of an abstract Witt ring with 2n2^n square classes in terms of a unique n×nn\times n matrix. Via computational search, we find all these matrices for nn up to 77. All obtained results affirm the Elementary Type Conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.14485,
  title  = {Normal Quaternionic Matrices and Finitely Generated Witt Rings},
  author = {Nico Lorenz and Alexander Schönert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.14485},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

The code used is available at https://github.com/nicolo314/NormalQuaternionicMatrices

R2 v1 2026-07-01T02:25:26.092Z