On integral quadratic forms having commensurable groups of automorphisms

Abstract

We introduce two notions of equivalence for rational quadratic forms. Two $n$-ary rational quadratic forms are commensurable if they possess commensurable groups of automorphisms up to isometry. Two $n$-ary rational quadratic forms $F$ and $G$ are projectivelly equivalent if there are nonzero rational numbers $r$ and $s$ such that $rF$ and $sG$ are rationally equivalent. It is shown that if $F$\ and $G$\ have Sylvester signature $\{-,+,+,...,+\}$ then $F$\ and $G$\ are commensurable if and only if they are projectivelly equivalent. The main objective of this paper is to obtain a complete system of (computable) numerical invariants of rational $n$-ary quadratic forms up to projective equivalence. These invariants are a variation of Conway's $p$-excesses. Here the cases $n$ odd and $n$ even are surprisingly different. The paper ends with some examples