Paravector


The name paravector is used for the combination of a scalar and a vector in any Clifford algebra, known as geometric algebra among physicists.
This name was given by J. G. Maks in a doctoral dissertation at Technische Universiteit Delft, Netherlands, in 1989.
The complete algebra of paravectors along with corresponding higher grade generalizations, all in the context of the Euclidean space of three dimensions, is an alternative approach to the spacetime algebra introduced by David Hestenes. This alternative algebra is called algebra of physical space.

Fundamental axiom

For Euclidean spaces, the fundamental axiom indicates that the product of a vector with itself is the scalar value of the length squared
Writing
and introducing this into the expression of the fundamental axiom
we get the following expression after appealing to the fundamental axiom again
which allows to
identify the scalar product of two vectors as
As an important consequence we conclude that two orthogonal vectors anticommute

The three-dimensional Euclidean space

The following list represents an instance of a complete basis for the space,
which forms an eight-dimensional space, where the multiple indices indicate the product of the respective basis vectors, for example
The grade of a basis element is defined in terms of the vector multiplicity, such that
According to the fundamental axiom, two different basis vectors anticommute,
or in other words,
This means that the volume element squares to
Moreover, the volume element commutes with any other element of the algebra, so that it can be identified with the complex number, whenever there is no danger of confusion. In fact, the volume element along with the real scalar forms an algebra isomorphic to the standard complex algebra. The volume element can be used to rewrite an equivalent form of the
basis as

Paravectors

The corresponding paravector basis that combines a real scalar and vectors is
which forms a four-dimensional linear space. The paravector space in the three-dimensional Euclidean space can be used to represent the space-time of special relativity as expressed in the algebra of physical space.
It is convenient to write the unit scalar as, so that
the complete basis can be written in a compact form as
where the Greek indices such as run from to.

Antiautomorphism

Reversion conjugation

The Reversion antiautomorphism is denoted by. The action of this conjugation is to reverse the order of the geometric product.
where vectors and real scalar numbers are invariant under
reversion conjugation and are said to be real, for example:
On the other hand, the trivector and bivectors change sign under reversion
conjugation and are said to be purely imaginary. The reversion conjugation applied to each basis element is given
below

Clifford conjugation

The Clifford Conjugation is denoted by a bar over the object
. This conjugation is also called bar conjugation.
Clifford conjugation is the combined action of grade involution and reversion.
The action of the Clifford conjugation on a paravector is to reverse the sign of the
vectors, maintaining the sign of the real scalar numbers, for example
This is due to both scalars and vectors being invariant to reversion and scalars are of zero order and so are of
even grade whilst vectors are of odd grade and so undergo a sign change under grade involution.
As antiautomorphism, the Clifford conjugation is distributed as
The bar conjugation applied to each basis element is given
below
  • Note.- The volume element is invariant under the bar conjugation.

    Grade automorphism

The grade automorphism
is defined as the inversion of the sign of odd-grade multivectors, while maintaining the even-grade multivectors invariant:

Invariant subspaces according to the conjugations

Four special subspaces can be defined in the space
based on their symmetries under the reversion and Clifford conjugation
  • Scalar subspace: Invariant under Clifford conjugation.
  • Vector subspace: Reverses sign under Clifford conjugation.
  • Real subspace: Invariant under reversion conjugation.
  • Imaginary subspace: Reverses sign under reversion conjugation.
Given as a general Clifford number, the complementary scalar and vector parts of are given by
symmetric and antisymmetric combinations with the Clifford conjugation
In similar way, the complementary Real and Imaginary parts of are given
by symmetric and antisymmetric combinations with the Reversion conjugation
It is possible to define four intersections, listed below
The following table summarizes the grades of the respective subspaces, where for example,
the grade 0 can be seen as the intersection of the Real and Scalar subspaces
  • Remark: The term "Imaginary" is used in the context of the algebra and does not imply the introduction of the standard complex numbers in any form.

    Closed subspaces with respect to the product

There are two subspaces that are closed with respect to the product. They are the scalar space and the even space that are isomorphic with the well known algebras of complex numbers and quaternions.
  • The scalar space made of grades 0 and 3 is isomorphic with the standard algebra of complex numbers with the identification of
  • :
  • The even space, made of elements of grades 0 and 2, is isomorphic with the algebra of quaternions with the identification of
  • :
  • :
  • :

    Scalar product

Given two paravectors and, the generalization of the scalar product is
The magnitude square of a paravector is
which is not a definite bilinear form and can be equal to zero even if the paravector is not equal to zero.
It is very suggestive that the paravector space automatically obeys the metric of the Minkowski space
because
and in particular:

Biparavectors

Given two paravectors and, the biparavector B is
defined as:
The biparavector basis can be written as
which contains six independent elements, including real and imaginary terms.
Three real elements as
and three imaginary elements as
where run from 1 to 3.
In the Algebra of physical space,
the electromagnetic field is expressed as a biparavector as
where both the electric and magnetic fields are real vectors
and represents the pseudoscalar volume element.
Another example of biparavector is the representation of the space-time rotation rate that can be expressed as
with three ordinary rotation angle variables and three rapidities.

Triparavectors

Given three paravectors, and, the triparavector T is
defined as:
The triparavector basis can be written as
but there are only four independent triparavectors, so it can be reduced to

Pseudoscalar

The pseudoscalar basis is
but a calculation reveals that it contains only a single term. This term is the volume element.
The four grades, taken in combination of pairs generate the paravector, biparavector and triparavector spaces as shown in the next table, where for example, we see that the paravector is made of grades 0 and 1

Paragradient

The paragradient operator is the generalization of the gradient operator in the paravector space. The paragradient in the standard paravector basis is
which allows one to write the d'Alembert operator as
The standard gradient operator can be defined naturally as
so that the paragradient can be written as
where.
The application of the paragradient operator must be done carefully, always respecting its non-commutative nature. For example, a widely used derivative is
where is a scalar function of the coordinates.
The paragradient is an operator that always acts from the left if the function is a scalar function. However, if the function is not scalar, the paragradient can act from the right as well. For example, the following expression is expanded as

Null paravectors as projectors

Null paravectors are elements that are not necessarily zero but have magnitude identical to zero. For a null paravector, this property necessarily implies the following identity
In the context of Special Relativity they are also called lightlike paravectors.
Projectors are null paravectors of the form
where is a unit vector.
A projector of this form has a complementary projector
such that
As projectors, they are idempotent
and the projection of one on the other is zero because they are null paravectors
The associated unit vector of the projector can be extracted as
this means that is an operator
with eigenfunctions and
, with respective eigenvalues
and.
From the previous result, the following identity is valid assuming that is analytic around zero
This gives origin to the pacwoman property, such that the following identities are satisfied

Null basis for the paravector space

A basis of elements, each one of them null, can be constructed for the complete
space. The basis of interest is the following
so that an arbitrary paravector
can be written as
This representation is useful for some systems that are naturally expressed in terms of the
light cone variables that are the coefficients of and
respectively.
Every expression in the paravector space can be written in terms of the null basis. A paravector is in general parametrized by two real scalars numbers
and a general scalar number
the paragradient in the null basis is

Higher dimensions

An n-dimensional Euclidean space allows the existence of multivectors of grade n. The dimension of the vector space is evidently equal to n and a simple combinatorial analysis shows that the dimension of the bivector space is. In general, the dimension of the multivector space of grade m is and the dimension of the whole Clifford algebra is.
A given multivector with homogeneous grade is either invariant or changes sign under the action of the reversion conjugation. The elements that remain invariant are defined as Hermitian and those that change sign are defined as anti-Hermitian. Grades can thus be classified as follows: