Two lives: Compositions of unimodular rows

TL;DR

This paper establishes a new framework connecting unimodular rows with Spin groups, introduces a novel composition law, and explores new orbit structures, enhancing understanding of algebraic and geometric properties of these objects.

Contribution

It introduces a new composition law for unimodular rows via Spin groups and composition algebras, and links elementary orbits to Spin orbits over all rings.

Findings

Elementary orbits of unimodular rows are equivalent to Spin orbits.

New composition law for unimodular rows using composition algebras.

Potential for discovering new orbit structures in quadratic spaces.

Abstract

The paper lays the foundation for the study of unimodular rows using Spin groups. We show that elementary orbits of unimodular rows (of any length $n\geq 3$) are equivalent to elementary Spin orbits on the unit sphere. (This bijection is true over all commutative rings). In the special case $n=3$, we get an interpretation of the Vaserstein symbol using Spin groups. In addition, we introduce a new composition law that operates on certain subspaces of the underlying quadratic space (using the multiplication in composition algebras). In particular, the special case of split-quaternions leads to the composition of unimodular rows (discovered by L. Vaserstein and later generalized by W. van der Kallen). Strikingly, with this approach, we now see the possibility of new orbit structures not only for unimodular rows (using octonion multiplication) but also for more general quadratic spaces.