In
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, more precisely in
group theory and
hyperbolic geometry, Arithmetic Kleinian groups are a special class of
Kleinian groups constructed using
order
Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to:
* Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood
* Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...
s in
quaternion algebras. They are particular instances of
arithmetic groups. An arithmetic hyperbolic three-manifold is the quotient of
hyperbolic space by an arithmetic Kleinian group.
Definition and examples
Quaternion algebras
A quaternion algebra over a field
is a four-dimensional
central simple -algebra. A quaternion algebra has a basis
where
and
.
A quaternion algebra is said to be split over
if it is isomorphic as an
-algebra to the algebra of matrices
; a quaternion algebra over an algebraically closed field is always split.
If
is an embedding of
into a field
we shall denote by
the algebra obtained by
extending scalars from
to
where we view
as a subfield of
via
.
Arithmetic Kleinian groups
A subgroup of
is said to be ''derived from a quaternion algebra'' if it can be obtained through the following construction. Let
be a
number field which has exactly two embeddings into
whose image is not contained in
(one conjugate to the other). Let
be a quaternion algebra over
such that for any embedding
the algebra
is isomorphic to the
Hamilton quaternions
In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quatern ...
. Next we need an order
in
. Let
be the group of elements in
of reduced norm 1 and let
be its image in
via
. We then consider the Kleinian group obtained as the image in
of
.
The main fact about these groups is that they are discrete subgroups and they have finite covolume for the
Haar measure In mathematical analysis, the Haar measure assigns an "invariant volume" to subsets of locally compact topological groups, consequently defining an integral for functions on those groups.
This measure was introduced by Alfréd Haar in 1933, though ...
on
. Moreover, the construction above yields a cocompact subgroup if and only if the algebra
is not split over
. The discreteness is a rather immediate consequence of the fact that
is only split at its complex embeddings. The finiteness of covolume is harder to prove.
An ''arithmetic Kleinian group'' is any subgroup of
which is
commensurable
Two concepts or things are commensurable if they are measurable or comparable by a common standard.
Commensurability most commonly refers to commensurability (mathematics). It may also refer to:
* Commensurability (astronomy), whether two orbit ...
to a group derived from a quaternion algebra. It follows immediately from this definition that arithmetic Kleinian groups are discrete and of finite covolume (this means that they are
lattices in
).
Examples
Examples are provided by taking
to be an
imaginary quadratic field,
and
where
is the
ring of integers
In mathematics, the ring of integers of an algebraic number field K is the ring of all algebraic integers contained in K. An algebraic integer is a root of a monic polynomial with integer coefficients: x^n+c_x^+\cdots+c_0. This ring is often deno ...
of
(for example
and