A new unification of the Maxwell equations is given in the domain of Clifford algebras with
in a fashion similar to those obtained with Pauli and Dirac algebras. It is shown that the new electromagnetic field multivector can be obtained from a potential function that is closely related to the scalar and the vector potentials of classical electromagnetics. Additionally it is shown that the gauge transformations of the new multivector and its potential function and the Lagrangian density of the electromagnetic field are in agreement with the transformation rules of the second-rank antisymmetric electromagnetic field tensor, in contrast to the results obtained by applying other versions of Clifford algebras.
Clifford Algebra Maxwell’s Equations Electromagnetism Vector Potential1. Introduction
Clifford algebras provide a unifying structure for Euclidean, Minkowski, and multivector spaces of all dimensions. Vectors and differential operators expressed in terms of Clifford algebras provide a natural language for physics which has some advantages over the standard techniques [1] - [6] . Applications of Clifford algebras and related spaces to mathematical physics are numerous. A valuable collection is given by Chishom and Common [4] . There are other applications in the literature. For example, DeFaria et al. [7] applied Clifford algebras to set up a formalism for magnetic monopoles. Salingaros [8] extended the Cauchy-Rie- mann equations of holomorphy to fields in higher-dimensional spaces in the framework of Clifford algebras and studied the Maxwell equations in vacuum and the Lorentz gauge conditions. He showed that the Maxwell equations in vacuum are equivalent to the equation of holomorphy in Minkowski space-time. Imaeda [9] showed that Maxwell equation in vacuum are equivalent to the condition of holomorphy for functions of a real biquaternion variable.
It has been shown that when the electromagnetic field is defined as the sum of an electric field vector and a magnetic field bivector, the four Maxwell equations reduce into a single equivalent equation in the domain of Pauli and Dirac algebras [3] [4] . In this work, we apply a different Clifford algebra to the Maxwell equ- ations of electromagnetism, and we show how this formulation relates to the classical theory in a straightforward manner resulting in two main formulas; the first is a simplistic rendering of Maxwell’s equations in a short formula
The second is the reconstruction of the combined electric and magnetic fields by a single transformation of the four-potential
Our investigation differs in approach from those in Hestenes and Chisholm- Common in its simplicity and ability to use a single potential function to cor- rectly derive Maxwell’s equations in a vacuum.
In what follows, we first lay out the theory of the Clifford algebra employed in this work. We then discuss its applications to electromagnetism and obtain a new electromagnetic field multivector, which is closely related to the scalar and vector potentials of the classical electromagnetics. We show that the gauge transformations of the new multivector and its potential function and the La- grangian density of the electromagnetic field are all in agreement with the transformation rules of the rank-2 antisymmetric electromagnetic field tensor. Finally, we give the matrix representation of the electromagnetic field multive- ctor and its Lorentz transformation.
2. Theory
Consider the Clifford algebra over the field of real numbers generated by the elements with relations
and no others [1] [10] . As a vecor space over, the algebra has dimension. A basis for consists of all products of the form, with and. The empty product is identified with the scalar 1. There are such products, and an arbitrary element of (called a multivector) is a linear combination of these products. If we write for a multiindex and, then, where for all. For instance, an arbitrary element of can be written as
An important subspace of is
which is isomorphic to the generalized Minkowski space. Notice that this is a subspace of dimension rather than dimension or.
A product where, or any expression equivalent to a scalar multiple of it is called an m-blade. Let be the sum of the m- blades of, called the m-vector part of, then
If for some positive integer m, then is said to be homogeneous of grade m.
The inner and outer products of blades are defined as follows [1] : The inner product of an r-blade and as s-blade is
The outer product of and is
By linearity, these definitions extend to and, where and are multivectors.
Some examples of inner and outer products are:
There are three important involutions on [10] :
1) inversion: defined by for
2) reversion: defined by
3) conjugation: defined by
Then it follows that, , and for all x and in.
3. Derivatives
Let be the differential operator, where. Let be the differential operator. Let be a domain in, and sup- pose that has continuous derivatives of whatever order the context requires. Then and are the left and right derivatives of, respec- tively. In terms of components, these derivatives are defined by
It is straightforward to show that the following identities hold:
The Clifford algebra maybe written as the algebra where. If we identify with the subspace spanned by, then is the usual skew-field of quater- nions with
The geometric product on satisfies the relation, where is the usual cross-product. However, since additional relations exist among, , and, inner and outer products are not defined here.
If is a vector field on, then it is straightforward to show that
Theorem 1. Suppose is a vector field on. Then if and only if, where is a real-valued harmonic function of.
Proof. A vector field equals for a real-valued function if and only if. The function is harmonic if and only if. □
4. Applications to Electromagnetism
In Gaussian units, the differential form of the Maxwell equations for sources in vacuum are [11]
where, , and are time-dependent vector fields in and is a real-valued function. That is, each quantity is a function of, where and is time. Note that is the charge density multiplied by and is the current density multiplied by.
We recast the Maxwell equations in the language of Clifford algebras by keeping the electric field as a vector, but replacing the magnetic field vector by the magnetic field bivector, defined as [3] [12]
The electromagnetic field multivector is then defined as. It can be shown that
In terms of and, the Maxwell equations for sources in vacuum may now be written as
Theorem 2. The Maxwell equations are equivalent to the single equation
Proof. Since,
Using the Maxwell equations, we obtain
But
Therefore, we obtain Equation (32). Conversely, assuming Equation (32), the Maxwell equations follow by setting the real parts, the vector parts, the bivector parts, and the trivector parts of each side equal. This completes the proof. □
From classical electrodynamics [11] , the fields and are derived from a scalar potential and a vector potential by
where and satisfy the wave equations
and the continuity equation
We can formulate this as follows: Let, and write
where and. Then
Note that.
The derivative of is
Using Equations (42) and (43) and noting that
we obtain
Theorem 3. The electromagnetic field is obtained from the potential function by
Proof. From Equation (46) we have. Therefore,
□
Note that Equation (47) may also be written as, since by the continuity eqation.
5. Gauges5.1. Lorentz Transformation of the Electromagnetic Field
A Lorentz transformation is an isometry of the Minkowski space, such that whenever. In the special case where one inertial reference frame is moving relative to another frame with constant velocity in the -direction, the Lorentz trans- formation relating them is represented by the matrix
where
In the general case, writing, we have
and
Thus the operator transforms as, where acts on on the right in the usual way. Calculations show that associativity does not hold in the expression. To summarize, if, then.
Suppose now that, where is a potential function for so that. Then is a potential function for the transformed electromagnetic field multivector. Therefore,
and.
Theorem 4. Under the Lorentz transformation, the electromagnetic field multivector transforms into according to
Again, associativity does not hold in this equation.
5.2. Lorenz Gauge Invariance
Before we get to the mathematics of this section, let us note the difference in Lorentz and Lorenz. These names, in fact, do belong to different scientists and thus we consider both types of gauge invariance here.
The common gauge invariant from classical electrodynamics is to consider
In our formalism this leads us to
Examining this a little more fully, we know that the electric and magnetic fields do not change under Lorenz or Coulomb gauges and thus we obtain
Following through we see
As the multivector field must remain unchanged we obtain the gauge invariant condition
6. The Lagrangian Density
Recall that in classical electromagnetism the Lagrangian density in a vacuum is given by
By expanding this a bit, we find
In order to recreate this in the Clifford algebraic formulation we consider
Thus we might expect that the Lagrangian density becomes
Examining this a little we see that
Since our inner product is commutative we have a cancellation of field product terms and.
In higher dimensions, one may wish to restrict to the 0-blade so as to disallow higher dimensional cross terms. Thus we write
Now let’s consider the situation outside a vacuum. We have
Let us write
Then using our potential we have the Lagrangian density of the electro- magnetic fields outside a vacuum,
7. Representation by Matrices
Complex numbers can be represented by matrices. Similarly, as we show in the Appendix, the Clifford algebra is represented by matrices. The element is represented by the matrix
From this we can write an natrix representation of the electromagnetic field multivector
The matrix in the upper left corner contains all the coordinates of and is the same as the matrix representation of the second-rank antisymmetric electromagnetic field tensor [11] . If we use this representation for, that is,
then the Lorentz transformation of is given by [11]
A quite lengthy calculation (see Appendix) shows that the two transformations given by Equations (54) and (73) are exactly identical.
8. Concluding Remarks
We have shown that in the framework of the Clifford algebra defined in Equation (3), the Maxwell equations in vacuum reduce to a single equation in a fashion similar to that in other types of Clifford algebras. The multivector is closely related to the second-rank antisymmetric electromagnetic field tensor [11] , whose condition of holomorphy is also equivalent to the Maxwell equations in vacuum [8] . However, the multivector formalism may have some theoretical advantages over the tensor formalism.
Furthermore, we have shown that the electromagnetic field multivector can be derived from a potential function, which is closely related to the scalar and the vector potentials of classical electromagnetics.
Finally, we have discussed the Lorentz transformation of the potential function and the multivector field, and have shown that these transformations are in agreement with the transformation of the second-rank antisymmetric electro- magnetic field tensor.
The formulation given by other investigators [3] [4] differs from the present work in that they have employed the Pauli algebra in which the square of each of the three unit elements is +1 rather than −1, or the Dirac algebra in which one unit element has square +1 and three unit elements have square −1. All these types of Clifford algebras have been extensively used.
By repeating our calculations with instead of −1 in Equation (3), it can be shown that the Maxwell equations in vacuum reduce to, which is in agreement with the result given by Jancewicz [12] . Equation (47) then becomes, where is the potential function given by Equation (41). Equation (54) for the Lorentz transformation of then reduces to. Repeating the calculations of the Appendix, it turns out that this transformation is equivalent to, where the matrix represen- tation of is now given by
Note that this matrix is not antisymmetric and the representation is not the same as that of the electromagnetic field tensor, and the transformation rule is also different. This is in contrast to the result obtained from applying a Clifford algebra with.
Cite this paper
Mohazzabi, P., Wielenberg, N.J. and Alexander, G.C. (2017) A New Formulation of Maxwell’s Equations in Clifford Algebra. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 5, 1575-1588. https://doi.org/10.4236/jamp.2017.58130
Appendix
Here we show that the two transformations given in Equations (54) and (73) are identical.
We have
and
Therefore,
It follows that the matrix representation of is
We also have
So the matrix representation of is
The general Lorentz transformation and its inverse are given by the following matrices:
From Equation (54) we have
where
and
Let be the m-th row of. Then
and
Recall that from Equation (42) we have
and from Equation (37) we have
Therefore,
Then we find the following identity by carrying out the multiplication,
For example, with and we obtain the Lorentz transform of,
and with and we obtain
It is now straightforward to show that the identity in Equation (18) is identical to
where is the transpose of the general Lorentz transformation matrix, and is the electromagnetic field tensor given by Equation (72).
Submit or recommend next manuscript to SCIRP and we will provide best service for you:
Accepting pre-submission inquiries through Email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
A wide selection of journals (inclusive of 9 subjects, more than 200 journals)
Providing 24-hour high-quality service
User-friendly online submission system
Fair and swift peer-review system
Efficient typesetting and proofreading procedure
Display of the result of downloads and visits, as well as the number of cited articles
Maximum dissemination of your research work
Submit your manuscript at: http://papersubmission.scirp.org/
Or contact jamp@scirp.org
ReferencesHestenes, D. and Sobczyk, G. (1984) Clifford Algebra to Geometric Calculus. Reidel, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6292-7Hestenes, D. (1986) New Foundations for Classical Mechanics. Reidel, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4802-0Hestenes, D. (1966) Space-Time Algebra. Gordon and Breach, New York.Chisholm, J.S.R. and Common, A.K., Eds. (1986) Clifford Algebras and Their Applications in Mathematical Physics. Reidel, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4728-3Kyrala, A. (1967) Theoretical Physics. Saunders, Philadelphia.Snygg, J. (1986) Expediting the Spinning Top Problem with a Small Amount of Clifford Algebra. American Journal of Physics, 54, 708-712. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.14510DeFaria, R.M.A., Recami, E. and Rodrigues Jr., W.A. (1985) A Satisfactory Formalism for Magnetic Monopoles by Clifford Algebras. Physics Letters B, 173, 233-236. https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-2693(86)90508-3Salingaros, N. (1981) Electromagnetism and Holomorphic Properties of Spacetime. Journal of Mathematical Physics, 22, 1919-1925. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.525165Imaeda, K. (1976) A New Foundation of Classical Electromagnetism. Nuovo Cimento B, 32, 138-162. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02726749Ahlfors, L.V. (1985) Mobius Transformations and Clifford Numbers in “Differential Geometry and Complex Analysis, H. E. Rauch Memorial Volume.” Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 65-73.Jackson, J.D. (1999) Classical Electrodynamics. 3rd Edition. Wiley, Hoboken.Jancewicz B. (1986) Remarks on Cliford Algebra in Classical Electromagnetism. In: Chisholm, J.S.R. and Common, A.K., Eds., Clifford Algebras and Their Applications in Mathematical Physics, Reidel, Dordrecht, 485-493.