Quaternionic spinors and horospheres in 4-dimensional hyperbolic geometry

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mathews, Daniel V., Varsha
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Mathews, Daniel V.
Varsha
author_facet Mathews, Daniel V.
Varsha
contents We give explicit bijective correspondences between three families of objects: certain pairs of quaternions, which we regard as spinors; certain flags in (1+4)-dimensional Minkowski space; and horospheres in 4-dimensional hyperbolic space decorated with certain pairs of spinorial directions. These correspondences generalise previous work of the first author, Penrose--Rindler, and Penner in lower dimensions, and use the description of 4-dimensional hyperbolic isometries via Clifford matrices studied by Ahlfors and others. We show that lambda lengths generalise to 4 dimensions, where they take quaternionic values, and are given by a certain bilinear form on quaternionic spinors. They satisfy a non-commutative Ptolemy equation, arising from quasi-Plücker relations in the Gel'fand--Retakh theory of noncommutative determinants. We also study various structures of geometric and topological interest that arise in the process.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_06572
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quaternionic spinors and horospheres in 4-dimensional hyperbolic geometry
Mathews, Daniel V.
Varsha
Geometric Topology
Differential Geometry
53C27 (Primary), 15A66 (Secondary)
We give explicit bijective correspondences between three families of objects: certain pairs of quaternions, which we regard as spinors; certain flags in (1+4)-dimensional Minkowski space; and horospheres in 4-dimensional hyperbolic space decorated with certain pairs of spinorial directions. These correspondences generalise previous work of the first author, Penrose--Rindler, and Penner in lower dimensions, and use the description of 4-dimensional hyperbolic isometries via Clifford matrices studied by Ahlfors and others. We show that lambda lengths generalise to 4 dimensions, where they take quaternionic values, and are given by a certain bilinear form on quaternionic spinors. They satisfy a non-commutative Ptolemy equation, arising from quasi-Plücker relations in the Gel'fand--Retakh theory of noncommutative determinants. We also study various structures of geometric and topological interest that arise in the process.
title Quaternionic spinors and horospheres in 4-dimensional hyperbolic geometry
topic Geometric Topology
Differential Geometry
53C27 (Primary), 15A66 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06572