Invariants of involutions on central simple algebras have been extensively studied. Many important results have been collected and extended by Knus, Merkurjev, Rost and Tignol in "The Book of Involutions" [BI]. Among those invariants are, for example, the (even) Clifford algebra for involutions of the first kind and the discriminant algebra for involutions of the second kind on an algebra of even degree. In his preprint "Triality, Cocycles, Crossed Products, Involutions, Clifford Algebras and Invariants" [S05], Saltman shows that the definition of the Clifford algebra can be generalized to Azumaya algebras and introduces a special cohomology, the so-called G-H cohomology, to describe its structure. In this dissertation, we prove analogous results about the discriminant algebra D(A; [tau]), which is the algebra of invariants under a special automorphism of order two of the [lambda]-power of an algebra A of even degree n = 2m with involution of the second kind, [tau]. In particular, we generalize its construction to the Azumaya case. We identify the exterior power algebra as defined in "Exterior Powers of Fields and Subfields" [S83] as a splitting subalgebra of the m-th [lambda]-power algebra and prove that a certain invariant subalgebra is a splitting subalgebra of the discriminant algebra. Assuming well-situatedness we show how this splitting subalgebra can be described as the fixed field of an S[subscript n] x C₂- Galois extension and that the corresponding subgroup is [Sigma] = S[subscript m] x S[subscript m] [mathematic symbol] C2. We give an explicit description of the corestriction map and define a lattice E that encodes the corestriction as being trivial. Lattice methods and cohomological tools are applied in order to define the group H²(G;E) which contains the cocycle that will describe the discriminant algebra as a crossed product. We compute this group to have order four and conjecture that it is the Klein 4-group and that the mixed element is the desired cocycle. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In this thesis, we study the Hasse principle for curves and K3 surfaces. We give several sufficient conditions under which the Brauer-Manin obstruction is the only obstruction to the Hasse principle for curves and K3 surfaces. Using these sufficient conditions, we construct several infinite families of curves and K3 surfaces such that these families are counterexamples to the Hasse principle that are explained by the Brauer-Manin obstruction.

Wir studieren Moduln über Maximalordnungen auf glatten projektiven Flächen und ihre Modulräume. Wir untersuchen null- und zweidimensionale Modulräume auf K3 und abelschen Flächen für unverzweigte Ordnungen, den sogenannten Azumaya Algebren. Weiterhin untersuchen wir Modulräume für spezielle verzweigte Ordnungen auf der projektiven Ebene. Wir beweisen das diese Räume immer glatt sind. Mit Hilfe dieses Ergebnisses studieren wir die Deformationstheorie der betrachteten Moduln. Im letzten Kapitel konstruieren wir explizite Ordnungen und berechnen einige Modulräume.

In this thesis, we consider q-deformations of multiplicative Hypertoric varieties, where q∈𝕂^x for 𝕂 an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0. We construct an algebra D_q of q-difference operators as a Heisenberg double in a braided monoidal category. We then focus on the case where q is specialized to a root of unity. In this setting, we use D_q to construct an Azumaya algebra on an l-twist of the multiplicative Hypertoric variety, before showing that this algebra splits over the fibers of both the moment and resolution maps. Finally, we sketch a derived localization theorem for these Azumaya algebras.