CLASSIFICATION OF CLIFFORD ALGEBRAS OF FREE QUADRATIC SPACES OVER FULL RINGS

Manddelberg [9] has shown that a Clifford algebra of a free quadratic space over an arbitrary semi-local ring R in Brawer-Wall group BW(R) is determined by its rank, determinant, and Hasse invariant. In this paper, we prove a corresponding result when R is a full ring.Throughout this paper, unless otherwise specified, we assume that R is a commutative ring having 2 a unit. A quadratic space (V, B, .phi.) over R is a finitely generated projective R-module V with a symmetric bilinear mapping B: V*V.rarw.R which is non-degenerate (i.e., the natural mapping V.rarw.Ho $m_{R}$(V,R) induced by B is an isomorphism), and with a quadratic mapping .phi.: V.rarw.R such that B(x,y)=1/2(.phi.(x+y)-.phi.(x)-.phi.(y)) and .phi.(rx) = $r^{2}$.phi.(x) for all x, y in V and r in R. We denote the group of multiplicative units of R by U9R). If (V, B, .phi.) is a free rank n quadratic space over R with an orthogonal basis { $x_{1}$,.., $x_{n}$}, we will write < $a_{1}$,.., $a_{n}$> for (V, B, .phi.) where the $a_{i}$=.phi.( $x_{i}$) are in U(R), and denote the space by the table [ $a_{ij}$ ] where $a_{ij}$ =B( $x_{i}$, $x_{j}$). In the case n=2 and B( $x_{1}$, $x_{2}$)=1/2 we reserve the notation [a $a_{11}$, $a_{22}$] for the space. A commutative ring R having 2 a unit is called full [10] if for every triple $a_{1}$, $a_{2}$, $a_{3}$ of elements in R with ( $a_{1}$, $a_{2}$, $a_{3}$)=R, there is an element w in R such that $a_{1}$+ $a_{2}$w+ $a_{3}$ $w^{2}$=unit.TEX>=unit.t.t.t.