Sophie Pautrel: Involutions in the Cayley–Dickson construction

Abstract: A *-algebra is an algebra equipped with an involution. The Cayley–Dickson construction builds new *-algebras from a given one, generalizing the construction of the complex numbers from the real numbers. Classically, this uses an involution corresponding to complex conjugation—but is that the only choice?

This talk is based on joint work with Masood Aryapoor and Per Bäck.