grandes-ecoles 2014 Q17
Proof of Set Membership, Containment, or Structural Property
We return to the case where $\mathbb { K }$ is an arbitrary field of characteristic zero. If $V$ and $V ^ { \prime }$ are two $\mathbb { K }$-vector spaces of finite dimension, $q \in \mathcal { Q } ( V )$ and $q ^ { \prime } \in \mathcal { Q } \left( V ^ { \prime } \right)$ are two non-degenerate quadratic forms, the orthogonal sum $q \perp q ^ { \prime }$ of $q$ and $q ^ { \prime }$ is the quadratic form on $V \times V ^ { \prime }$ defined by $$q \perp q ^ { \prime } \left( x , x ^ { \prime } \right) = q ( x ) + q ^ { \prime } \left( x ^ { \prime } \right)$$ for all $x \in V$ and all $x ^ { \prime } \in V ^ { \prime }$.
Let $V , V ^ { \prime }$ and $V ^ { \prime \prime }$ be three $\mathbb { K }$-vector spaces of finite dimension and $\left( q , q ^ { \prime } , q ^ { \prime \prime } \right) \in \mathcal { Q } ( V ) \times \mathcal { Q } \left( V ^ { \prime } \right) \times \mathcal { Q } \left( V ^ { \prime \prime } \right)$.
(a) Show that $q \perp q ^ { \prime } \in \mathcal { Q } \left( V \times V ^ { \prime } \right)$ and then that $\left( q \perp q ^ { \prime } \right) \perp q ^ { \prime \prime } \cong q \perp \left( q ^ { \prime } \perp q ^ { \prime \prime } \right)$.
(b) Show that if $q ^ { \prime } \cong q ^ { \prime \prime }$ then $q \perp q ^ { \prime } \cong q \perp q ^ { \prime \prime }$.
(c) Prove that if $V = V ^ { \prime } \oplus V ^ { \prime \prime }$ and $\tilde { q } ( x , y ) = 0$ for all $x \in V ^ { \prime }$ and all $y \in V ^ { \prime \prime }$, then $q \cong q ^ { \prime } \perp q ^ { \prime \prime }$ where $q ^ { \prime }$ is the restriction of $q$ to $V ^ { \prime }$ and $q ^ { \prime \prime }$ is the restriction of $q$ to $V ^ { \prime \prime }$.