A Limiting Version of a Theorem in Cohomology

Scheme-theoretic methods are used to classify ternary quadratic forms with values in line bundles over arbitrary schemes and to canonically determine the isomorphisms between them. The association of a quadratic bundle to its even Clifford algebra induces a natural bijection from the set of equivalence classes of line-bundle-valued quadratic forms on rank 3 vector bundles upto tensoring by twisted discriminant bundles and the set of isomorphism classes of schematic specialisations of rank 4 Azumaya bundles over any fixed scheme X. This statement is a limiting version of the following statement: the set of orbits of Disc(X) in the 1-cohomology of X in the fppf topology with values in O(3) is in bijection with the 1-cohomology with values in PGL(2). The various orthogonal groups of a quadratic bundle are canonically determined in terms of the automorphisms of its even Clifford algebra. Any automorphism of the latter arises from a similarity, and in fact from an orthogonal transformation if its determinant is a square. The special orthogonal group is thus identified with the subgroup of automorphisms with trivial determinant. A specialised algebra arises from a honest quadratic form iff its determinant has a square root and arises from a bilinear form iff the line subbundle generated by 1 is a direct summand.