29,909 research outputs found
The Quaternion-Based Spatial Coordinate and Orientation Frame Alignment Problems
We review the general problem of finding a global rotation that transforms a
given set of points and/or coordinate frames (the "test" data) into the best
possible alignment with a corresponding set (the "reference" data). For 3D
point data, this "orthogonal Procrustes problem" is often phrased in terms of
minimizing a root-mean-square deviation or RMSD corresponding to a Euclidean
distance measure relating the two sets of matched coordinates. We focus on
quaternion eigensystem methods that have been exploited to solve this problem
for at least five decades in several different bodies of scientific literature
where they were discovered independently. While numerical methods for the
eigenvalue solutions dominate much of this literature, it has long been
realized that the quaternion-based RMSD optimization problem can also be solved
using exact algebraic expressions based on the form of the quartic equation
solution published by Cardano in 1545; we focus on these exact solutions to
expose the structure of the entire eigensystem for the traditional 3D spatial
alignment problem. We then explore the structure of the less-studied
orientation data context, investigating how quaternion methods can be extended
to solve the corresponding 3D quaternion orientation frame alignment (QFA)
problem, noting the interesting equivalence of this problem to the
rotation-averaging problem, which also has been the subject of independent
literature threads. We conclude with a brief discussion of the combined 3D
translation-orientation data alignment problem. Appendices are devoted to a
tutorial on quaternion frames, a related quaternion technique for extracting
quaternions from rotation matrices, and a review of quaternion
rotation-averaging methods relevant to the orientation-frame alignment problem.
Supplementary Material covers extensions of quaternion methods to the 4D
problem.Comment: This replaces an early draft that lacked a number of important
references to previous work. There are also additional graphics elements. The
extensions to 4D data and additional details are worked out in the
Supplementary Material appended to the main tex
The variety of reductions for a reductive symmetric pair
We define and study the variety of reductions for a reductive symmetric pair
(G,theta), which is the natural compactification of the set of the Cartan
subspaces of the symmetric pair. These varieties generalize the varieties of
reductions for the Severi varieties studied by Iliev and Manivel, which are
Fano varieties.
We develop a theoretical basis to the study these varieties of reductions,
and relate the geometry of these variety to some problems in representation
theory. A very useful result is the rigidity of semi-simple elements in
deformations of algebraic subalgebras of Lie algebras.
We apply this theory to the study of other varieties of reductions in a
companion paper, which yields two new Fano varieties.Comment: 23 page
Properly discontinuous group actions on affine homogeneous spaces
A generalization of the Auslander conjecture is proved in the case when the
Levi factor of the Zariski closure of the acting group is a product of simple
real algebraic groups of rank \leq 1. Also, the Auslander conjecture is proved
for dimensions \leq 5
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