mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, the icosians are a specific set of Hamiltonian

quaternion In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quater ...

s with the same symmetry as the

600-cell In geometry, the 600-cell is the convex regular 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol . It is also known as the C600, hexacosichoron and hexacosihedroid. It is also called a tetraplex (abbreviated from ...

. The term can be used to refer to two related, but distinct, concepts: * The icosian

group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...

: a

multiplicative group In mathematics and group theory, the term multiplicative group refers to one of the following concepts: *the group under multiplication of the invertible elements of a field, ring, or other structure for which one of its operations is referre ...

of 120 quaternions, positioned at the vertices of a 600-cell of unit radius. This group is

isomorphic In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word i ...

to the

binary icosahedral group In mathematics, the binary icosahedral group 2''I'' or Coxeter&Moser: Generators and Relations for discrete groups: : Rl = Sm = Tn = RST is a certain nonabelian group of order 120. It is an extension of the icosahedral group ''I'' or (2,3,5) of o ...

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of ...

120. * The icosian ring: all finite sums of the 120 unit icosians.

Unit icosians

The 120 unit icosians, which form the icosian group, are all

even permutation In mathematics, when ''X'' is a finite set with at least two elements, the permutations of ''X'' (i.e. the bijective functions from ''X'' to ''X'') fall into two classes of equal size: the even permutations and the odd permutations. If any total o ...

s of: * 8 icosians of the form ½(±2, 0, 0, 0) * 16 icosians of the form ½(±1, ±1, ±1, ±1) * 96 icosians of the form ½(0, ±1, ±1''/φ'', ±''φ'') In this case, the vector (''a'', ''b'', ''c'', ''d'') refers to the quaternion ''a'' + ''b''i + ''c''j + ''d''k, and φ represents the

golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0, where the Greek letter phi ( ...

( + 1)/2. These 120 vectors form the H4 root system, with a

Weyl group In mathematics, in particular the theory of Lie algebras, the Weyl group (named after Hermann Weyl) of a root system Φ is a subgroup of the isometry group of that root system. Specifically, it is the subgroup which is generated by reflections ...

of order 14400. In addition to the 120 unit icosians forming the vertices of a 600-cell, the 600 icosians of norm 2 form the vertices of a

120-cell In geometry, the 120-cell is the convex regular 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol . It is also called a C120, dodecaplex (short for "dodecahedral complex"), hyperdodecahedron, polydodecahedron, he ...

. Other

subgroup In group theory, a branch of mathematics, given a group ''G'' under a binary operation ∗, a subset ''H'' of ''G'' is called a subgroup of ''G'' if ''H'' also forms a group under the operation ∗. More precisely, ''H'' is a subgroup ...

s of icosians correspond to the

tesseract In geometry, a tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of e ...

16-cell In geometry, the 16-cell is the regular convex 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol . It is one of the six regular convex 4-polytopes first described by the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli in the ...

and

24-cell In geometry, the 24-cell is the convex regular 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol . It is also called C24, or the icositetrachoron, octaplex (short for "octahedral complex"), icosatetrahedroid, o ...

Icosian ring

The icosians lie in the ''golden field'', (''a'' + ''b'') + (''c'' + ''d'')i + (''e'' + ''f'')j + (''g'' + ''h'')k, where the eight variables are

rational number In mathematics, a rational number is a number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction of two integers, a numerator and a non-zero denominator . For example, is a rational number, as is every integer (e.g. ). The set of all ra ...

s. This quaternion is only an icosian if the vector (''a'', ''b'', ''c'', ''d'', ''e'', ''f'', ''g'', ''h'') is a point on a lattice ''L'', which is isomorphic to an E8 lattice. More precisely, the quaternion norm of the above element is (''a'' + ''b'')² + (''c'' + ''d'')² + (''e'' + ''f'')² + (''g'' + ''h'')². Its Euclidean norm is defined as ''u'' + ''v'' if the quaternion norm is ''u'' + ''v''{{radic, 5. This Euclidean norm defines a

quadratic form In mathematics, a quadratic form is a polynomial with terms all of degree two ("form" is another name for a homogeneous polynomial). For example, :4x^2 + 2xy - 3y^2 is a quadratic form in the variables and . The coefficients usually belong to ...

on ''L'', under which the lattice is isomorphic to the E8 lattice. This construction shows that the

Coxeter group In mathematics, a Coxeter group, named after H. S. M. Coxeter, is an abstract group that admits a formal description in terms of reflections (or kaleidoscopic mirrors). Indeed, the finite Coxeter groups are precisely the finite Euclidean refle ...

H_4

embeds as a subgroup of

E_8

. Indeed, a linear isomorphism that preserves the quaternion norm also preserves the Euclidean norm.

References

John H. Conway John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches o ...

Neil Sloane __NOTOC__ Neil James Alexander Sloane (born October 10, 1939) is a British-American mathematician. His major contributions are in the fields of combinatorics, error-correcting codes, and sphere packing. Sloane is best known for being the creator ...

: ''Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups (2nd edition)'' * John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel,

Chaim Goodman-Strauss Chaim Goodman-Strauss (born June 22, 1967 in Austin TX) is an American mathematician who works in convex geometry, especially aperiodic tiling. He is on the faculty of the University of Arkansas and is a co-author with John H. Conway of ''The Sym ...

: ''The Symmetries of Things (2008)'' * Frans Marceli
Icosians and ADE
* Adam P. Gouche
Good fibrations
Quaternions John Horton Conway