Geometric Algebra: A natural representation of three-space

Abstract

Historically, there have been many attempts to produce an appropriate mathematical formalism for modeling the nature of physical space, such as Euclid's geometry, Descartes' system of Cartesian coordinates, the Argand plane, Hamilton's quaternions and Gibbs' vector system using the dot and cross products. We illustrate however, that Clifford's geometric algebra (GA) provides the most elegant description of physical space. Supporting this conclusion, we firstly show how geometric algebra subsumes the key elements of the competing formalisms and secondly how it provides an intuitive representation of the basic concepts of points, lines, areas and volumes. We also provide two examples where GA has been found to provide an improved description of two key physical phenomena, electromagnetism and quantum theory, without using tensors or complex vector spaces. This paper also provides pedagogical tutorial-style coverage of the various basic applications of geometric algebra in physics.