In mathematics, the Cayley plane (or octonionic projective plane) P²(O) is a

projective plane In mathematics, a projective plane is a geometric structure that extends the concept of a plane. In the ordinary Euclidean plane, two lines typically intersect in a single point, but there are some pairs of lines (namely, parallel lines) that ...

over the

octonion In mathematics, the octonions are a normed division algebra over the real numbers, a kind of hypercomplex number system. The octonions are usually represented by the capital letter O, using boldface or blackboard bold \mathbb O. Octonions hav ...

s.Baez (2002). The Cayley plane was discovered in 1933 by

Ruth Moufang Ruth Moufang (10 January 1905 – 26 November 1977) was a German mathematician. Biography Born to German chemist Eduard Moufang and Else Fecht Moufang. Eduard Moufang was the son of Friedrich Carl Moufang (1848-1885) from Mainz, and Elisab ...

, and is named after

Arthur Cayley Arthur Cayley (; 16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was a prolific British mathematician who worked mostly on algebra. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics. As a child, Cayley enjoyed solving complex maths problems ...

for his 1845 paper describing the octonions.

Properties

In the Cayley plane, lines and points may be defined in a natural way so that it becomes a 2-dimensional projective space, that is, a

. It is a

non-Desarguesian plane In mathematics, a non-Desarguesian plane is a projective plane that does not satisfy Desargues' theorem (named after Girard Desargues), or in other words a plane that is not a Desarguesian plane. The theorem of Desargues is true in all projective s ...

, where

Desargues' theorem In projective geometry, Desargues's theorem, named after Girard Desargues, states: :Two triangles are in perspective ''axially'' if and only if they are in perspective ''centrally''. Denote the three vertices of one triangle by and , and ...

does not hold. More precisely, as of 2005, there are two objects called Cayley planes, namely the real and the complex Cayley plane. The real Cayley plane is the

symmetric space In mathematics, a symmetric space is a Riemannian manifold (or more generally, a pseudo-Riemannian manifold) whose group of symmetries contains an inversion symmetry about every point. This can be studied with the tools of Riemannian geometry, ...

F₄/Spin(9), where F₄ is a compact form of an exceptional Lie group and Spin(9) is the

spin group In mathematics the spin group Spin(''n'') page 15 is the double cover of the special orthogonal group , such that there exists a short exact sequence of Lie groups (when ) :1 \to \mathrm_2 \to \operatorname(n) \to \operatorname(n) \to 1. As ...

of nine-dimensional

Euclidean space Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, that is, in Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are Euclidean sp ...

(realized in F₄). It admits a cell decomposition into three cells, of dimensions 0, 8 and 16.Iliev and Manivel (2005). The complex Cayley plane is a

homogeneous space In mathematics, particularly in the theories of Lie groups, algebraic groups and topological groups, a homogeneous space for a group ''G'' is a non-empty manifold or topological space ''X'' on which ''G'' acts transitively. The elements of ...

under the complexification of the group E₆ by a

parabolic subgroup In the theory of algebraic groups, a Borel subgroup of an algebraic group ''G'' is a maximal Zariski closed and connected solvable algebraic subgroup. For example, in the general linear group ''GLn'' (''n x n'' invertible matrices), the subgroup ...

''P''₁. It is the closed orbit in the projectivization of the minimal complex representation of E₆. The complex Cayley plane consists of two complex F₄-orbits: the closed orbit is a quotient of the complexified F₄ by a parabolic subgroup, the open orbit is the complexification of the real Cayley plane,Ahiezer (1983). retracting to it.

Notes

References

* * * * * *Helmut Salzmann et al. "Compact projective planes. With an introduction to octonion geometry"; de Gruyter Expositions in Mathematics, 21. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, 1995. xiv+688 pp. Projective geometry {{geometry-stub

Properties

See also

Notes

References