Octonion algebras over rings are not determined by their norms

Answering a question of H. Petersson, we provide a class of examples of pair of octonion algebras over a ring having isometric norms.Comment: 8 page

A lower bound on the essential dimension of a connected linear group

Let G be a connected linear algebraic group defined over an algebraically closed field k and H be a finite abelian subgroup of G whose order is prime to char(k). We show that the essential dimension of G is bounded from below by rank(H) - rank C_G(H)^0, where rank C_G(H)^0 denotes the rank of the maximal torus in the centralizer C_G(H). This inequality, conjectured by J.-P. Serre, generalizes previous results of Reichstein -- Youssin (where char(k) is assumed to be 0 and C_G(H) to be finite) and Chernousov -- Serre (where H is assumed to be a 2-group).Comment: 21 page

Three-point Lie algebras and Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants

We define and classify the analogues of the affine Kac-Moody Lie algebras for the ring corresponding to the complex projective line minus three points. The classification is given in terms of Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants. We also study the question of conjugacy of Cartan subalgebras for these algebras.Comment: 16 page

Résidus sur les grassmanniennes affines

Given a linear group G over a field k, we define a notion of index and residue of an element g of G(k((t)). This provides an alternative proof of Gabber's theorem stating that G has no subgroups isomorphic to the additive or the commutative group iff G(k[[t]])= G(k((t))). In the case of a reductive group, we offer an explicit connection with the theory of affine grassmannians