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David Roberts
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(This is a bit late, but I hope you find it interesting!)

Here's smooth representation of the generator of $\pi_4(Sp(1))$ (and so the same homotopy group of $S^3$ and $SU(2)$). Consider $S^4 = \mathbb{HP}^1$, and $Sp(1)$ the unit sphere in $\mathbb{H}$. Then the following function $t\colon \mathbb{HP}^4 \to Sp(1)$ represents the nontrivial homotopy class $S^4 \to S^3$: $$ t[p;q] = \frac{2p\bar{q}i\bar{p}q - |p|^4 + |q|^4}{|p|^4 + |q|^4} $$ where [p;q] are homogeneous coordinates on $\mathbb{HP}^4$. I don't know if this has appeared previously (I would love to know!), but I presented this as part of some slides at the Australian Mathematical Society's annual conference last year (see slide 6), and originally worked it out with a pointer from Michael Murray to the Hopf fibration described using quaternions (that is, $Sp(1) \to S(Im\mathbb{H})$, the unit sphere in the pure imaginaries). That this map is the generator (i.e. is not null-homotopic) I calculated following the answer at my question Detecting homotopy nontriviality of an element in a torsion homotopy group.

Note that this function followed by the inclusion $Sp(1) \hookrightarrow Sp(2)$ (as the top left entry) is the generator of $\pi_4(Sp(2))$ (by results of Mimura and Toda). And thus we also get a representative for the generator of $\pi_4$ of $Spin(5) = Sp(2)$.

David Roberts
  • 35.5k
  • 11
  • 124
  • 349