English

Witt invariants of quaternionic forms

Rings and Algebras 2025-04-23 v2

Abstract

We describe all Witt invariants of anti-hermitian forms over a quaternion algebra with its canonical involution, and in particular all Witt invariants of orthogonal groups O(A,σ)O(A,\sigma) where (A,σ)(A,\sigma) is an central simple algebra with orthogonal involution and AA has index 22. They are combinations of appropriately defined λ\lambda-powers, similarly to the case of quadratic forms, but the module of invariants is no longer free over those operations. The method involves extending the scalars to a generic splitting field of AA, and controlling the residues of the invariants with respect to valuations coming from closed points in the Severi-Brauer variety.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.08920,
  title  = {Witt invariants of quaternionic forms},
  author = {Nicolas Garrel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.08920},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

18 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:55:28.257Z