Homogeneous Space - Example

Example

For example in the line geometry case, we can identify H as a 12-dimensional subgroup of the 16-dimensional general linear group

GL4,

defined by conditions on the matrix entries

h13 = h14 = h23 = h24 = 0,

by looking for the stabilizer of the subspace spanned by the first two standard basis vectors. That shows that X has dimension 4.

Since the homogeneous coordinates given by the minors are 6 in number, this means that the latter are not independent of each other. In fact a single quadratic relation holds between the six minors, as was known to nineteenth-century geometers.

This example was the first known example of a Grassmannian, other than a projective space. There are many further homogeneous spaces of the classical linear groups in common use in mathematics.

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