Octonions: Es Lattice to Ajg. Geoffrey Dixon Published 1995 October 2, 2006 Abstract T present here another example o highest dimensional fap fibration: lato discrete version of the1. D; to Ex with Quaternions. ‘To motivate the higher dimensional case involving the octonions, I'l first develop a. lower dimensional latice fibration using the quaternions, Let gu, m = 0, 1,2, 3, be a conventional basis for the quaternion algebra [1], Q. Define 1 Dy = {tam} Uf cto + 41 + 92+ 4)} w These 8 + 16 = 24 unit quatemnions form the inner shell (nearest neighbors tthe origin) of a Dg = Ag lattice (As is the real laminated lattice in & dimensions [2). Ibis well known thatthe set D} is closed under multiplication. Define Gls todh @ ‘This is also the inner shell of a Ds lattice, these elements normalized to 1//2. This is (shrunken) Spin (4) rotation of Dj, However, J; isnot closed under multiplication ‘even if expanded tothe unit sphere. From these two sets we ean construct th lattice, In particular, inner shell of the 8-dimensional f's = As {, <0,V >: UV EDT} (2x 24 = 48 elements) U {eUV >: UV EDT, UVt=4¢n} (8x24 = 192etements) 9) (on € (0,1, 2,8))istheinner sell ofan 2 ates, subset ofthe wnit7-sphere in ‘To illustrate the second of the sets in (3), lets look at the set of all V € Dz, UV" = bn for’ = 5(1-+ 1). There are 8 such elements +a) AR - ms Henan) 4 Infact, there are 8 such elements for each 17 € Dj, hence that second set has § x 24 = 192 elements. ‘The total number of elements is 48 ++ 192 = 240, which isthe order of Ps [2] ‘There is another characterization of this 192 element subset: {: UV € Dy, V = 4U or +V € DE}, Oo ‘The first two elements in (4) are 1 and the remaining six elements satisfy + Ve Dy.2. Fibrations. IU, V € Q satisfy vutevvt=1 the the dour [ : | isan clement of S®, the (unit) 7-sphere. Define the map v u]peyt poet ove vivivlly vet vvt -ifio . lt Al © 10 Dy uvtgvor [0 1] , owt [> S Jeo [t o]+ ‘The set of all elements uut-vvt uvt+vot uvt—vut z 2 2 (first (wo real, third pure quaternion, so 5-dimensional) covers S" (the 4-sphere in R°, inthis ease of radius $), The map (6) isan example of the sphere fibration [1] + st o si (Another more interesting example of this fibration in terms of the octonions was given in[3}) its [ io | © Ps, as defined in (3), then the map (6) takes E's onto the lattice 2° (all inner shells t this poin), cons ing of elements of the form [> *] 8) [5 “Joes[t o]oae[4 a] (= 1.2.3). Thisis an example ofthe late fibration By Ps 28 o (Again, in [3] a more interesting example of this fibration was presented using the ‘octonions.)