symmetric monoidal (∞,1)-category of spectra
The concept of a special linear group with the octonions does not literally make sense, due to the failure of the octonions to be an associative algebra.
Nevertheless, the pattern of the special linear groups of the other three real normed division algebras suggests that for some suitably adjusted concept of “special linear group”, it should make sense to speak of , after all, and that it should essentially be the spin group :
exceptional spinors and real normed division algebras
Manogue and Schray have shown how to interpret as as follows. For a clear summary of results see also Dray and Manogue.
First, a warmup with the complex numbers. The space of hermitian matrices with entries in may be identified with 4-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, since the determinant is a quadratic form of signature . Any element acts as a linear transformation of as follows:
and this action preserves the determinant on , so we obtain a group homomorphism from to . In fact this is a 2-1 homomorphism from onto . Since is simply connected, this allows us to identify with .
Following this pattern, the space of hermitian matrices with entries in the octonions may be identified with 10-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, since the determinant is a quadratic form of signature . (The determinant of an element of is well-defined using the usual formula for the determinant of a matrix, because any octonion commutes with its conjugate.) Let be the set of octonionic matrices all of whose entries lie in an arbitrary subalgebra of isomorphic to . Then the determinant of is well-defined by the usual formula, and furthermore for all .
Let then be the subgroup of linear transformations of generated by those of the form
where has . This group acts by linear transformations of in a unique way such that
when has . This action preserves the determinant on . Thus, there is a group homomorphism from to , and in fact it maps to in a 2-1 and onto way, which allows us to identify with .
Another proposal for making sense of is due to Hitchin. In this approach, “” is a submanifold of “”, which is an open orbit of on . Here is the 16-dimensional spin representation of ; this may be identified with .
John Baez, The octonions, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 39 (2002), 145–205. Section 3.3: and Lorentzian geometry. (html)
Tevian Dray, Corinne Manogue, Octonionic Cayley spinors and , Comment. Math. Univ. Carolin. 51 (2010), 193–207. (arXiv:0911.2255)
Tevian Dray, John Huerta, Joshua Kincaid, The magic square of Lie groups: the case, Lett. Math. Phys. 104 (2014), 1445–68. (arXiv:2009.00390)
Nigel Hitchin, over the octonions, Mathematical Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Vol. 118. No. 1. Royal Irish Academy, 2018. (arXiv:1805.02224)
Corinne Manogue, Jörg Schray, Finite Lorentz transformations, automorphisms, and division algebras. Section 5: Lorentz transformations. J. Math. Phys. 34 (1993), 3746-3767. (arXiv:hep-th/9302044)
Last revised on December 7, 2020 at 17:37:22. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.