Sesquilinear form


In mathematics, a sesquilinear form is a generalization of a bilinear form that, in turn, is a generalization of the concept of the dot product of Euclidean space. A bilinear form is linear in each of its arguments, but a sesquilinear form allows one of the arguments to be "twisted" in a semilinear manner, thus the name; which originates from the Latin numerical prefix meaning "one and a half". The basic concept of the dot product – producing a scalar from a pair of vectors – can be generalized by allowing a broader range of scalar values and, perhaps simultaneously, by widening the definition of what a vector is.
A motivating special case is a sesquilinear form on a complex vector space,. This is a map that is linear in one argument and "twists" the linearity of the other argument by complex conjugation. This case arises naturally in mathematical physics applications. Another important case allows the scalars to come from any field and the twist is provided by a field automorphism.
An application in projective geometry requires that the scalars come from a division ring,, and this means that the "vectors" should be replaced by elements of a -module. In a very general setting, sesquilinear forms can be defined over -modules for arbitrary rings.

Convention

Conventions differ as to which argument should be linear. In the commutative case, we shall take the first to be linear, as is common in the mathematical literature, except in the section devoted to sesquilinear forms on complex vector spaces. There we use the other convention and take the first argument to be conjugate-linear and the second to be linear. This is the convention used mostly by physicists and originates in Dirac's bra–ket notation in quantum mechanics.
In the more general noncommutative setting, with right modules we take the second argument to be linear and with left modules we take the first argument to be linear.

Complex vector spaces

Over a complex vector space a map is sesquilinear if
for all in and all in. is the complex conjugate of.
A complex sesquilinear form can also be viewed as a complex bilinear map
where is the complex conjugate vector space to. By the universal property of tensor products these are in one-to-one correspondence with complex linear maps
For a fixed in the map is a linear functional on . Likewise, the map is a conjugate-linear functional on.
Given any complex sesquilinear form on we can define a second complex sesquilinear form via the conjugate transpose:
In general, and will be different. If they are the same then is said to be Hermitian. If they are negatives of one another, then is said to be skew-Hermitian. Every sesquilinear form can be written as a sum of a Hermitian form and a skew-Hermitian form.

Matrix representation

If is a finite-dimensional complex vector space, then relative to any basis of, a sesquilinear form is represented by a matrix, by the column vector, and by the column vector :
The components of are given by.

Hermitian form

A complex Hermitian form, is a sesquilinear form such that
The standard Hermitian form on is given by
More generally, the inner product on any complex Hilbert space is a Hermitian form.
A minus sign is introduced in the Hermitian form to define the group SU.
A vector space with a Hermitian form is called a Hermitian space.
The matrix representation of a complex Hermitian form is a Hermitian matrix.
A complex Hermitian form applied to a single vector
is always real. One can show that a complex sesquilinear form is Hermitian iff the associated quadratic form is real for all.

Skew-Hermitian form

A complex skew-Hermitian form, is a complex sesquilinear form such that
Every complex skew-Hermitian form can be written as imaginary unit| times a Hermitian form.
The matrix representation of a complex skew-Hermitian form is a skew-Hermitian matrix.
A complex skew-Hermitian form applied to a single vector
is always pure imaginary.

Over a division ring

This section applies unchanged when the division ring is commutative. More specific terminology then also applies: the division ring is a field, the anti-automorphism is also an automorphism, and the right module is a vector space. The following applies to a left module with suitable reordering of expressions.

Definition

A -sesquilinear form over a right -module is a bi-additive map with an associated anti-automorphism of a division ring such that, for all in and all in,
The associated anti-automorphism for any nonzero sesquilinear form is uniquely determined by.

Orthogonality

Given a sesquilinear form over a module and a subspace of, the orthogonal complement of with respect to is
Similarly, is orthogonal to with respect to, written , when. This relation need not be symmetric, i.e. does not imply .

Reflexivity

A sesquilinear form is reflexive if, for all in,
That is, a sesquilinear form is reflexive precisely when the derived orthogonality relation is symmetric.

Hermitian variations

A -sesquilinear form is called -Hermitian if there exists in such that, for all in,
If, the form is called -Hermitian, and if, it is called -anti-Hermitian.
For a nonzero -Hermitian form, it follows that for all in,
It also follows that is a fixed point of the map. The fixed points of this map from a subgroup of the additive group of.
A -Hermitian form is reflexive, and every reflexive -sesquilinear form is -Hermitian for some.
In the special case that is the identity map, is commutative, is a bilinear form and. Then for the bilinear form is called symmetric, and for is called skew-symmetric.

Example

Let be the three dimensional vector space over the finite field, where is a prime power. With respect to the standard basis we can write and and define the map by:
The map is an involutory automorphism of. The map is then a -sesquilinear form. The matrix associated to this form is the identity matrix. This is a Hermitian form.

In projective geometry

In a projective geometry, a permutation of the subspaces that inverts inclusion, i.e.
is called a correlation. A result of Birkhoff and von Neumann shows that the correlations of desarguesian projective geometries correspond to the nondegenerate sesquilinear forms on the underlying vector space. A sesquilinear form is nondegenerate if for all in only if.
To achieve full generality of this statement, and since every desarguesian projective geometry may be coordinatized by a division ring, Reinhold Baer extended the definition of a sesquilinear form to a division ring, which requires replacing vector spaces by -modules.

Over arbitrary rings

The specialization of the above section to skewfields was a consequence of the application to projective geometry, and not intrinsic to the nature of sesquilinear forms. Only the minor modifications needed to take into account the non-commutativity of multiplication are required to generalize the arbitrary field version of the definition to arbitrary rings.
Let be a ring, an -module and an antiautomorphism of.
A map is -sesquilinear if
for all in and all in.
An element is orthogonal to another element with respect to the sesquilinear form if. This relation need not be symmetric, i.e. does not imply.
A sesquilinear form is reflexive if implies for all in.
A sesquilinear form is Hermitian if there exists such that
for all in. A Hermitian form is necessarily reflexive, and if it is nonzero, the associated antiautomorphism is an involution.
Since for an antiautomorphism we have for all in, if, then must be commutative and is a bilinear form. In particular, if, in this case, is a skewfield, then is a field and is a vector space with a bilinear form.
An antiautomorphism can also be viewed as an isomorphism, where is the opposite ring of, which has the same underlying set and the same addition, but whose multiplication operation is defined by, where the product on the right is the product in. It follows from this that a right -module can be turned into a left -module,. Thus, the sesquilinear form can be viewed as a bilinear form.