The Action of the Symplectic Group Associated with a Quadratic Extension of Fields

Abstract Given a quadratic extension L/K of fields and a regular alternating space (V, f) of finite dimension over L, we classify K-subspaces of V which do not split into the orthogonal sum of two proper K-subspaces. This allows one to determine the orbits of the group SpL(V, f) in the set of K-subspaces of V.