The Magic Square of Reflections and Rotations
THE MAGIC SQUARE OF REFLECTIONS AND ROTATIONS RAGNAR-OLAF BUCHWEITZ†, ELEONORE FABER, AND COLIN INGALLS Dedicated to the memories of two great geometers, H.M.S. Coxeter and Peter Slodowy ABSTRACT. We show how Coxeter’s work implies a bijection between complex reflection groups of rank two and real reflection groups in O(3). We also consider this magic square of reflections and rotations in the framework of Clifford algebras: we give an interpretation using (s)pin groups and explore these groups in small dimensions. CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2 2. Prelude: the groups 2 3. The Magic Square of Rotations and Reflections 4 Reflections, Take One 4 The Magic Square 4 Historical Note 8 4. Quaternions 10 5. The Clifford Algebra of Euclidean 3–Space 12 6. The Pin Groups for Euclidean 3–Space 13 7. Reflections 15 8. General Clifford algebras 15 Quadratic Spaces 16 Reflections, Take two 17 Clifford Algebras 18 Real Clifford Algebras 23 Cl0,1 23 Cl1,0 24 Cl0,2 24 Cl2,0 25 Cl0,3 25 9. Acknowledgements 25 References 25 Date: October 22, 2018. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 20F55, 15A66, 11E88, 51F15 14E16 . Key words and phrases. Finite reflection groups, Clifford algebras, Quaternions, Pin groups, McKay correspondence. R.-O.B. and C.I. were partially supported by their respective NSERC Discovery grants, and E.F. acknowl- edges support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 789580. All three authors were supported by the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach through the Leibniz fellowship program in 2017, and E.F and C.I.
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