Cartan Calculus via Pauli Matrices

Abstract

In this paper we will provide a new operatorial counterpart of the path-integral formalism of classical mechanics developed in recent years. We call it new because the Jacobi fields and forms will be realized via finite dimensional matrices. As a byproduct of this we will prove that all the operations of the Cartan calculus, such as the exterior derivative, the interior contraction with a vector field, the Lie derivative and so on, can be realized by means of suitable tensor products of Pauli and identity matrices.