On the Moisil-Theodoresco operator in orthogonal curvilinear coordinates

Abstract

It is generally well understood the legitimate action of the Moisil-Theo\-do\-res\-co ope\-ra\-tor, over a quaternionic valued function defined on $\mathbb{R}^3$ (sum of a scalar and a vector field) in Cartesian coordinates, but it does not so in any orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system. This paper sheds some new light on the technical aspect of the subject. Moreover, we introduce a notion of quaternionic Laplace operator acting on a quaternionic valued function from which one can recover both scalar and vector Laplacians in vector analysis context.