Cayley-Menger extension of metrics on affine spaces

Abstract

Associated to any affine space A endowed with a metric structure of arbitrary signature we consider the space of affine functionals operating on the space of quadratic functions of A. On this functional space we characterize a symmetric bilinear form derived from the metric structure in a functorial way. We explore the geometrical relations of the relevant objects in this new metric space. Their properties encode all characteristics known in the literature for euclidean squared distance matrices, Cayley-Menger matrices and determinants, squared distance coordinate systems, and Lie and M\"obius sphere geometries. Birthing this form as Cayley-Menger product, it represents a geometrical foundation unifying results in all these areas, extending them to metric affine spaces or bundles.