Canonic form of linear quaternion functions

Abstract

The general linear quaternion function of degree one is a sum of terms with quaternion coefficients on the left and right. The paper considers the canonic form of such a function, and builds on the recent work of Todd Ell, who has shown that any such function may be represented using at most four quaternion coefficients. In this paper, a new and simple method is presented for obtaining these coefficients numerically using a matrix approach which also gives an alternative proof of the canonic forms.