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University of Denver

Cayley-Dickson Loops

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>In this dissertation we study the Cayley-Dickson loops, multiplicative structures arising from the standard Cayley-Dickson doubling process. More precisely, the Cayley-Dickson loop <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em> is the multiplicative closure of basic elements of the algebra constructed by <em>n</em> applications of the doubling process (the first few examples of such algebras are real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions, octonions, sedenions). Starting at the octonions, Cayley-Dickson algebras and loops become nonassociative, which presents a significant challenge in their study.</p> <p>We begin by describing basic properties of the Cayley–Dickson loops <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>. We establish or recall elementary facts about <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>, e.g., inverses, conjugates, orders of elements, and diassociativity. We then discuss some important subloops of <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>, for instance, associator subloop, derived subloop, nuclei, center, and show that <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em> are Hamiltonian. We study the structure of the automorphism groups of <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>. We show that all subloops of <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em> of order 16 fall into two isomorphism classes, in particular, any such subloop is either isomorphic to the octonion loop O<sub>16</sub>, or the quasioctonion loop O<sub>16</sub>. This helps to establish that starting at the sedenion loop, the group Aut (<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) is isomorphic to Aut (O<sub>16</sub>) x (Z<sub>2</sub>) <sup>n−3</sup> .</p> <p>Next we study two notions that are of interest in loop theory, the inner mapping group <em>Inn</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) and the multiplication group <em>Mlt</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>). We prove that <em>Inn</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) is an elementary abelian 2-group of order 2<sup>2 n−2</sup> , moreover, every <em>f</em> > <em>Inn</em>(<em>Q</em>) is a product of disjoint transpositions of the form (<em>x,−x</em>). This implies that nonassociative Cayley–Dickson loops are not automorphic. The elements of <em>Mlt</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) are even permutations and have order 1, 2 or 4. We show that <em>Mlt</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) is a semidirect product of <em>Inn</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) x <em>Z<sub>2</sub></em> and an elementary abelian 2-group <em>K</em>, and construct an isomorphic copy of <em>Mlt</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) as an external semidirect product of two abstract elementary abelian 2-groups. The groups<em> Inn</em><sub>l</sub>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) and <em>Inn<sub>r</sub></em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) are proved to be equal, elementary abelian 2-groups of order 22 <sup>n−1−1</sup> . We also establish that <em>Mltl</em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) is a semidirect product of<em> Inn</em><sub>l</sub>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) x Z<sub>2</sub> and <em>K</em>, and that <em>Mlt</em><sub>l</sub>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) and <em>Mlt<sub>r</sub></em>(<em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>) are isomorphic.</p> <p>We describe basic properties of the Cayley-Dickson loops <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>, e.g., inverses, conjugates, orders of elements, and diassociativity. We discuss some important subloops of <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em>, for instance, associator subloop, derived subloop, nuclei, center, and show that <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em> are Hamiltonian. We show that all subloops of <em>Q<sub>n</sub></em> of order 16 fall into two isomorphism classes, in particular, any such subloop is either isomorphic to the octonion loop, or the quasioctonion loop. We discuss automorphism groups, inner mapping groups, and multiplication groups of the Cayley-Dickson loops, and describe the progress made on the study of their subloop structure. We also provide incidence tetrahedra for the sedenion loop and other subloops of order 32, generalizing the idea of the octonion multiplication Fano plane.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph.D.
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Year dc:date.available
2012

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Kirshtein, Jenya
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Petr Vojtechovsky, Ph.D.
  • Michael Kinyon
  • Richard Ball
  • Nikolaos Galatos
  • Richard Green
  • J. Michael Daniels

Subjects

dc:subject × 7

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>
Language dc:language
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/849
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-1848

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Denver
Base URL
digitalcommons.du.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Kirshtein, Jenya. Cayley-Dickson Loops. Dissertation thesis, 2012. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/849