Background: Let $S^2$ denote the unit sphere in $\mathbb{R}^3$. By "stereographic projection", I mean the mapping from $S^2$ (remove the north pole) to the complex plane which sends
\begin{align*}
\begin{bmatrix} x \\ y \\ t \end{bmatrix} \in S^2 \mapsto z = \frac{x+iy}{1-t} \in \mathbb{C}.
\end{align*}
The inverse mapping, from the complex plane to the sphere, is then given by
\begin{align*}z = x+iy \in \mathbb{C} \mapsto \frac{2}{|z|^2+1} \cdot \begin{bmatrix} x \\ y \\ 0 \end{bmatrix} + \left(1 – \frac{2}{|z|^2 + 1}\right) \cdot \begin{bmatrix} 0 \\0 \\ 1 \end{bmatrix} \in S^2.
\end{align*}
Using the above correspondences, we can view a transformation of $\mathbb{C}$ as a transformation of $S^2$, or vice versa. I was especially interested to learn from this question that rotations of the $2$-sphere, i.e. the transformations corresponding to matrices in $SO(3)$, actually correspond to a subset of the fractional linear transformations $z \mapsto \frac{az + b}{cz + d}$. Precisely, $z \mapsto \frac{az + b}{cz + d}$ corresponds to a rotation of $S^2$ if and only if $\begin{bmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \\ \end{bmatrix}$ belongs (up to scalar multiple, I guess) to $U(2)$, the group of $2 \times 2$ unitary matrices. In particular, $z \mapsto \frac{1}{z}$ corresponds to rotating $S^2$ by $180$ degrees about the $x$-axis.
Upon learning the above fact, I wondered whether I could write down a unitary matrix whose fractional linear transformation corresponds to rotation by a given angle about the $x$-axis. After a while I was able to convince myself that the fractional linear transformation corresponding to
$$ U_\theta = \begin{bmatrix} \cos \theta & i \sin \theta \\ i \sin \theta & \cos \theta \\ \end{bmatrix} \in SU(2)$$
i.e. the mapping
$$f_\theta(z) = \frac{\cos \theta z + i \sin \theta}{i \sin \theta z + \cos \theta}$$
corresponds to rotation of $S^2$ through an angle of $\theta$ degrees about the $x$-axis, i.e. to the transformation given by the matrix
$$R_{2 \theta} = \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \cos(2 \theta) & – \sin( 2 \theta) \\ 0 & \sin(2 \theta) & \cos(2 \theta) \\ \end{bmatrix}.$$
The fact that the sphere spins around twice as $\theta : 0 \to 2 \pi$ I guess has something to do with the fact that $SU(2)$ is supposed to double-cover $SO(3)$.
Question: How can I efficiently prove that $f_\theta$ and $R_{2 \theta}$ really are the same transformation in different representations? To be sure, one can take a generic point $(x,y,t) \in S^2$ and check that the result of applying stereographic projection and then $f_\theta$ agrees with result of applying $R_{2 \theta}$ and then stereographic projection. However, doing this for specific points $(x,y,t)$ is more or less how I came up with the above formulae, and even then the algebra seemed to get pretty involved. Can somebody provide a more enlightening proof?
Best Answer
John's comment above is really an answer, modulo ploughing through the actual calculations. In this post, I'll apply his observation to arrive at all sorts of crazy formulae.
It is convenient to represent an element of $SO(3)$ in the form $R(e,\theta)$ described above because this makes conjugation easy to understand.
Now I'll use John's idea to calculate, for each 3d rotation $R \in SO(3)$, a unitary $U \in SU(2)$ such that the diagram $$\begin{matrix} S^2 & \overset{ P }{\longrightarrow} & \mathbb{C} \cup \{\infty\} \\ \downarrow^R & & \downarrow^U \\ S^2 & \overset{ P }{\longrightarrow} & \mathbb{C} \cup \{\infty\} \\ \end{matrix}$$ The point here is that once one learns the fact
one naturally wants to be able to explicitly write down a unitary corresponding to a specific rotation of the sphere.