Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/iii/paper-3/3/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 3 3 i Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Preserving the symmetric bilinear form infinitesimally means . In blocks of sizes , write as a general block matrix and multiply by the given . The condition says that is skew-symmetric. It forces the lower-right entry to be zero, the middle diagonal block to be the negative transpose of the upper-left block, and the two off-diagonal two-by-two blocks to be skew-symmetric. Thus the general element of the Special orthogonal Lie algebra iswhere is an arbitrary two-by-two matrix and are arbitrary two-component columns. More explicitly, using ten independent complex parameters,Conversely, substituting this matrix into gives zero, so there are no further restrictions. In particular .
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