grandes-ecoles 2014 Q18
Symplectic and Orthogonal Group Properties
We return to the case where $\mathbb { K }$ is an arbitrary field of characteristic zero. Let $V$ be a $\mathbb { K }$-vector space of finite dimension, $q \in \mathcal { Q } ( V )$ and $v , w \in V$ be two distinct vectors of $V$ such that $q ( v ) = q ( w ) \neq 0$.
We want to show in this question that there then exists an isometry $h \in O ( q )$ such that $h ( v ) = w$.
(a) Let $x \in V$ such that $q ( x ) \neq 0$. We denote by $s _ { x }$ the endomorphism of $V$ defined by $y \mapsto s _ { x } ( y ) = y - 2 \frac { \widetilde { q } ( x , y ) } { q ( x ) } x$. Show that $s _ { x }$ and $- s _ { x }$ belong to $O ( q )$.
(b) Suppose here that $q ( w - v ) \neq 0$. Show that the map $s _ { w - v }$ is an isometry such that $s _ { w - v } ( v ) = w$.
(c) Suppose here that $q ( w - v ) = 0$. Show that there exists an isometry $g \in O ( q )$ such that $g ( v ) = w$ and conclude.