In Cartesian coordinates
on the sphere
and
on the plane, the projection and its inverse are given by the formulas
and
It is not hard to see that
Now we use the trick introduced in this entry. Let
and let
The determinant we are trying to compute is
which is the characteristic polynomial of
evaluated at
times
.
Now,
is certainly diagonalizable (which doesn’t even matter, but it makes it easier to think about), and we know its eigenvalues. Why do we know its eigenvalues? Because
is a matrix of rank
, hence nullity
, hence
of its
eigenvalues are zero. What is the other eigenvalue? It’s the same as the sum of the eigenvalues, which is the trace of
, which is
. Put that information together, and we have that the characteristic polynomial of
is
Substitute
for
to get
which implies
Thus
which implies
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