Paper 2, Section II, G

Linear Algebra | Part IB, 2011

Let VV be an nn-dimensional R\mathbb{R}-vector space with an inner product. Let WW be an mm-dimensional subspace of VV and WW^{\perp} its orthogonal complement, so that every element vVv \in V can be uniquely written as v=w+wv=w+w^{\prime} for wWw \in W and wWw^{\prime} \in W^{\perp}.

The reflection map with respect to WW is defined as the linear map

fW:Vw+wwwVf_{W}: V \ni w+w^{\prime} \longmapsto w-w^{\prime} \in V

Show that fWf_{W} is an orthogonal transformation with respect to the inner product, and find its determinant.

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