Orthogonal Isomorphic Representations Of Free Groups

Abstract

1. Introduction. We consider the group of proper orthogonal transformations (rotations) in three-dimensional Euclidean space, represented by real orthogonal matrices (aik) (i, k = 1,2,3) with determinant + 1 . It is known that this rotation group contains free (non-abelian) subgroups; in fact Hausdorff (5) showed how to find two rotations P and Q generating a group with only two non-trivial relationsP2 = Q3 = I.