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Mar 10, 2023 at 22:40 comment added Dave Benson Can I recommend Ed Brown's paper, "Generalizations of the Kervaire invariant," especially theorem 1.20 in that paper. I learned a great deal about quadratic forms and the prime two from this paper, especially the fact that there is a mod 8 invariant and a Gauß sum that computes it.
Feb 27, 2023 at 7:53 vote accept Bipolar Minds
Feb 26, 2023 at 10:08 answer added Uriya First timeline score: 2
Feb 20, 2023 at 14:29 comment added Theo Johnson-Freyd @UriyaFirst and Ycor: Perhaps leave this as an answer rather than a comment?
Feb 19, 2023 at 17:51 comment added Bipolar Minds Ah, so its the (usual) kernel of $q|_{\operatorname{rad(b)}}$ as $q$ is a homomorphism on $\operatorname{rad(b)}$
Feb 19, 2023 at 13:09 comment added Uriya First In the theory of quadratic forms over a field of characteristic 2, the radical of a quadratic form $q$ is sometimes defined as $R(q)=\{x\in \mathrm{rad}(b):q(x)=0\}$, where $b$ is the polar form of $q$. This should work in your situation as well: $R(q)$ is a subgroup of $G$ and $q$ factors via a $\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}$-quadratic map on $G/R(q)$. (This should coincide with @YCor's suggestion, but is perhaps conceptually clearer.)
Feb 19, 2023 at 12:36 comment added Bipolar Minds @YCor Thx, that makes sense. Using the above notation the factor map $\bar{q}$ should be again a quadratic form since the quotient map $\pi$ is an epimorphism, right? Still I would like to have a more 'compact' description of this group, but I first need to make up my mind about what I mean by that..
Feb 19, 2023 at 10:59 comment added YCor A "kernel" can be defined for an arbitrary map $f$ from an abelian group $G$ to a set $X$, namely $K=\{g:\forall g':f(g'+g)=f(g')\}$. Thus $G/K_G$ is the largest quotient group of $G$ through which $f$ factors. This extends the usual kernel of quadratic maps on vector spaces.
Feb 19, 2023 at 10:57 history edited YCor CC BY-SA 4.0
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Feb 18, 2023 at 23:37 history edited Bipolar Minds CC BY-SA 4.0
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Feb 18, 2023 at 23:35 comment added Bipolar Minds @LSpice Correct!
Feb 18, 2023 at 23:32 comment added LSpice What property should the kernel $K$ have? The end of your first paragraph suggests you might want something like $K$ being minimal with respect to the requirement that there is a quadratic form $\bar q$ on $G/K$ that pulls back to $q$. Is that, together presumably with some sort of uniqueness, correct? (Also, a notational suggestion: old-fashioned texts often used $[\cdot]$ for the greatest-integer function, so $q(n) = n/2 + \mathbb Z$ might be clearer than $q(n) = [n/2]$.)
Feb 18, 2023 at 21:33 history edited Bipolar Minds CC BY-SA 4.0
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Feb 18, 2023 at 21:20 history asked Bipolar Minds CC BY-SA 4.0