The Octonions

The octonions are the largest of the four normed division algebras. While somewhat neglected due to their nonassociativity, they stand at the crossroads of many interesting fields of mathematics. Here we describe them and their relation to Clifford algebras and spinors, Bott periodicity, projective and Lorentzian geometry, Jordan algebras, and the exceptional Lie groups. We also touch upon their applications in quantum logic, special relativity and supersymmetry.Comment: 56 pages LaTeX, 11 Postscript Figures, some small correction

Analytic Loops and Gauge Fields

In this paper the linear representations of analytic Moufang loops are investigated. We prove that every representation of semisimple analytic Moufang loop is completely reducible and find all nonassociative irreducible representations. We show that such representations are closely associated with the (anti-)self-dual Yang-Mills equations in ${\bf R}^8$Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, no figure

Alternating quaternary algebra structures on irreducible representations of sl(2,C)

We determine the multiplicity of the irreducible representation V(n) of the simple Lie algebra sl(2,C) as a direct summand of its fourth exterior power $\Lambda^4 V(n)$. The multiplicity is 1 (resp. 2) if and only if n = 4, 6 (resp. n = 8, 10). For these n we determine the multilinear polynomial identities of degree $\le 7$ satisfied by the sl(2,C)-invariant alternating quaternary algebra structures obtained from the projections $\Lambda^4 V(n) \to V(n)$. We represent the polynomial identities as the nullspace of a large integer matrix and use computational linear algebra to find the canonical basis of the nullspace.Comment: 26 pages, 13 table

A commutant realization of Odake's algebra

The bc\beta\gamma-system W of rank 3 has an action of the affine vertex algebra V_0(sl_2), and the commutant vertex algebra C =Com(V_0(sl_2), W) contains copies of V_{-3/2}(sl_2) and Odake's algebra O. Odake's algebra is an extension of the N=2 superconformal algebra with c=9, and is generated by eight fields which close nonlinearly under operator product expansions. Our main result is that V_{-3/2}(sl_2) and O form a Howe pair (i.e., a pair of mutual commutants) inside C. More generally, any finite-dimensional representation of a Lie algebra g gives rise to a similar Howe pair, and this example corresponds to the adjoint representation of sl_2.Comment: Minor corrections, discussion of Odake's algebra in Section 2 expanded, final versio