PERIODICITY THEOREM FOR STRUCTURE FRACTALS IN QUATERNIONIC FORMULATION

Abstract

It is well known that starting with real structure, the Cayley–Dickson process gives complex, quaternionic, and octonionic (Cayley) structures related to the Adolf Hurwitz composition formula for dimensions p = 2, 4 and 8, respectively, but the procedure fails for p = 16 in the sense that the composition formula involves no more a triple of quadratic forms of the same dimension; the other two dimensions are n = 27. Instead, Ławrynowicz and Suzuki (2001) have considered graded fractal bundles of the flower type related to complex and Pauli structures and, in relation to the iteraton process p → p + 2 → p + 4 → ⋯, they have constructed 24-dimensional "bipetals" for p = 9 and 27-dimensional "bisepals" for p = 13. The objects constructed appear to have an interesting property of periodicity related to the gradating function on the fractal diagonal interpreted as the "pistil" and a family of pairs of segments parallel to the diagonal and equidistant from it, interpreted as the "stamens." The present paper aims at an effective, explicit determination of the periods and expressing them in terms of complex and quaternionic structures, thus showing the quaternionic background of that periodicity. The proof of the Periodicity Theorem is given in the case where the index of the generator of the algebra in question exceeds the order of the initial algebra. In contrast to earlier results, the fractal bundle flower structure, in particular sepals, bisepals, perianths, and calyces are not introduced ab initio; they are quoted a posteriori, when they are fully motivated. The same concerns canonical two-layer pairing of prianth sepals and the relationship of fractal bundles of algebraic structure with the Hurwitz problem.