Talk:Unimodular lattice

Use of the term "lattice" needs uniformization

Although this article defines "lattice" in the manner that it uses the term, the article also refers (as it well should) to the Wikipedia article lattice, which defines lattice in a somewhat different manner, although the two definitions are closely related.

This article, unimodular lattice, defines "lattice" as a free abelian group of finite rank possessing an integral symmetric bilinear form.

The article lattice (group), on the other hand, defines "lattice" as a discrete subgroup of Rⁿ that spans Rⁿ (over the field R). This definition is more general, as it contains no integrality condition. It is also less abstract. (It is also unnecessarily restrictive, since a lattice in Rⁿ need only span a vector subspace of Rⁿ. This restriction does not unnecessarily limit the isomorphism classes of lattices, but it does limit what satisfies the definition of a lattice.)

I believe these two articles ought to be reconciled with each other.Daqu (talk) 22:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

• I made a first step by distinguishing "integral lattice" from "lattice" in the definition section. "Unimodular" assumes integral, but "lattice" should not. Eigenbra (talk) 01:41, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Use of the term "norm" needs explaining

From the article's statement that the Leech lattice has no vectors of norm 1 or 2, one may infer that the term "norm" is not being used here to mean the length of a vector (since the Leech lattice does have vectors of length 2). Probably "norm" in this article refers to the length squared of a vector. But this is not explained in this article, nor in the Wikipedia entry on norm. I suggest that this be clarified, both here and in the entry for norm.Daqu (talk) 22:00, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Applications

I think that the statement "The second cohomology group of a compact simply connected oriented topological 4-manifold is a unimodular lattice" needs to be corrected. This is true only if the manifold is closed, or if its boundary is homology spheres. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.194.40.121 (talk) 08:44, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a pretty good start for an article about ***lattices***

Free abelian group lattices, that is (not partially ordered set lattices).

So the title of this article should be "Lattice" rather than "Unimodular lattice".216.161.117.162 (talk) 16:55, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

One problem with the article is the absence of prior reference to a " vector space"

The section "Definitions" contains several references to "the vector space". But the article contains no prior references to what "the vector space" is.

The closest it comes is the second sentence of the introductory paragraph:

"For a lattice in n-dimensional Euclidean space, this is equivalent to requiring that the volume of any fundamental domain for the lattice be 1."

But this implies that not all lattices are "in" n-dimensional Euclidean space. Which leaves open the question of what "the vector space" is.

The article must clarify these confusions.216.161.117.162 (talk) 17:02, 23 September 2020 (UTC)