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# Peeter Joot's (OLD) Blog.

• 279,102

## Starting a new blog: peeterjoot.com

Posted by peeterjoot on May 21, 2014

If you came here looking for new blog posts on obscure math, physics, and computer programming, please check out peeterjoot.com.  There you will find stuff including:

• Notes from courses I am taking at UofT (part time ECE M.Eng in electromagnetics), such as Modelling of Multiphysics Systems.
• An enumeration of other things I have written, including archives of all the individual pdfs that I have posted over the years along with my blog entries.  All these pdfs are now stored directly on the new site.  I will no longer be posting new content to any of my (three) google sites pages, nor will I be updating anything previously posted there. If you are looking for any corrections I may or may not have made, please look at the docs anchored off of the new blog.
• A chronological listing of all the Mathematica notebooks I have written.  The newest versions of these notebooks can still be found in my Mathematica github repository.  A snapshot of each of these is now also available on the new site, so if you have the CDF plugin installed, these can now be examined by clicking on the links directly.  Ironically, with chrome and my CDF installation, I’m able to view the .nb suffixed notebooks directly in the browser, but a click on any CDF (.cdf) notebook triggers a download?
• Some notes about my setup of the mathjax-latex plugin, and the differences in latex markup with that plugin compared to the wp-latex plugin (which is available by default on wordpress.com).  My future mathematical blogging should be way easier, probably won’t require any of my old tex2blog script, and will also look better!

## Why a new blog?

Why after 611 blog posts on this wordpress.com hosted blog, dating all the way back to 2009, would I decide to ante-up and pay for hosting?

My primary motivation for this was truly geeky.  I wanted the flexibility to be able to manage wordpress plugins (i.e. mathjax-latex and wolframcdf), and to also be able to put plain old html and arbitrary file content into the apache2 directory structure.  I’ve wanted plain html hosting for a while, but made do with google sites (i.e. crappy but free).  I’d also wanted to be able to use the wolfram CDF plugin on my blog, but also not enough to pay for it.  However, once I tried mathjax-latex, I was sold.  At least as a writer, compared to wp-latex, this “new way” completely kicks ass.  It now takes much less time to produce posts with mathematics content, and requires far less scripting to convert from standalone latex.  Unfortunately, one of the costs of this is pushed onto the reader, since it takes more time for mathjax-latex content to be formatted than the images produced by the standard wordpress latex plugin.

I tried out an amazon EC2 bitnami image for a while (amazon offers a free trial year to evaluate their offerings).  That’s a flexible setup and offers direct access to the Linux VM, which is very nice.  However, with an amazon EC2 image, I’m not really sure what I would end up paying.  The charts seem somewhat vague, depending on future usage of both machine and storage.  I would also have pay separately for a domain name, and pay separately for amazon hosting of the DNS entry.

I ended up deciding to use a go-daddy hosted wordpress instance, which is a flat rate service.  It is less flexible than a godaddy standalone web-hosting environment, but also cheaper ($12 for the first year, including the domain name, and ~$50/year after that).  It also looks like I can upgrade this to a more generic web hosting environment later if the cost of that seems justified.  I’ll see first if only having sftp access to htdocs is enough of a major inconvenience to pay that additional yearly fee.  EDIT: go-daddy either lied about their non-introductory rate, or increased their rates after I signed up.  The renewal rates are about ~\$100/year currently.

Configuring a custom MathJax configuration was a bit of a pain with only sftp access, mostly because I had to copy the MathJax tree, which was very slow for so many small files.  I did that directory tree transfer with FileZilla since sftp ‘put –r’ appears to be busted.  This MathJax setup was way easier on the EC2 since the ssh shell allowed for wget and local unzip directly from the apache2 htdocs tree.  It’s a shame that the mathjax-latex plugin doesn’t allow the MathJax tree to be served from the default server (what the plugin settings calls the ‘MathJax CDN Service’).  Logically, I’d like to be able to use that CDN service, but have my configuration file hosted locally.  That config file (config/default.js) is a single small file, and is likely all that I’ll ever have to alter in that whole directory tree.

## new version of Geometric Algebra compilation posted.

Posted by peeterjoot on May 18, 2014

Changelog:

– total rewrite of Stokes theorem content, grouping into new chapter.

– added an Index, and associated \index markup: the new stokes chapter is indexed, as well as \chapter and \section headings.

Other than the above, this version mostly has various bits of accumulated maintainance to the latex code, many of which were scripted:

– Run filter: perl -p -i ~/bin/bracePurgeRef

>> had some older code that used (\eqnref) and (\cite). Strip out the braces (leave the formatting to the ref and cite macros used, and change those globally if desired).

– generate the \myTime command used in FrontBackmatter/Titleback.tex, FrontBackmatter/Titlepage.tex

(changed: make.rules & ~/bin/mkRevInfo)

– remove all Stokes theorem related content, pending a complete rewrite:

\include{calculus/vectorIntegralRelations}
\include{calculus/stokesRevisited}
\include{calculus/stokesNoTensor}

– changes to the implementation of definition, theorem, lemma, and example environments (much prettier boxed backgrounds.)

– Replace many

\begin{align*}
\end{align*}

or

\begin{align}
\end{align}

or

with

\label{eqn:XX:n}
\begin{aligned}

\end{aligned}

or
\label{eqn:XX:n}

– Replace \hbar with \Hbar:

\newcommand{\Hbar}[0]{\,\hbar}

(some package is redefining hbar so that it appears typeset to close)

– use \eqnref instead of \ref

– spelling: indexes -> indices

– move figures to ../../figures/gabook/

(new submodule)

– replace text ‘figure \ref’ with \cref

– replace text ‘equation \ref’ with \eqnref. Equation \ref -> \Eqnref

– Add appendix chapter ‘Mathematica notebooks’

– replace \boxed{} and \myBoxed{} with \boxedEquation{}

– replace \myMathWithDescription -> \mathLabelBox

– prune some old RCS log file content.

– use \prod instead of \Pi

– split make.vars into make.bookvars and cleanup makefile accordingly.

– some introduction of \lr{} insteaad of \left( \right)

– use macros_bm.sty

## Stokes theorem in Geometric algebra

Posted by peeterjoot on May 17, 2014

[Click here for a PDF of this post with nicer formatting  (especially since my latex to wordpress script has left FORMULA DOES NOT PARSE errors.)]

Understanding how to apply Stokes theorem to higher dimensional spaces, non-Euclidean metrics, and with curvilinear coordinates has been a long standing goal.

A traditional answer to these questions can be found in the formalism of differential forms, as covered for example in [2], and [8]. However, both of those texts, despite their small size, are intensely scary. I also found it counter intuitive to have to express all physical quantities as forms, since there are many times when we don’t have any pressing desire to integrate these.

Later I encountered Denker’s straight wire treatment [1], which states that the geometric algebra formulation of Stokes theorem has the form

\begin{aligned}\int_S \nabla \wedge F = \int_{\partial S} F\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.1)

This is simple enough looking, but there are some important details left out. In particular the grades do not match, so there must be some sort of implied projection or dot product operations too. We also need to understand how to express the hypervolume and hypersurfaces when evaluating these integrals, especially when we want to use curvilinear coordinates.

I’d attempted to puzzle through these details previously. A collection of these attempts, to be removed from my collection of geometric algebra notes, can be found in [4]. I’d recently reviewed all of these and wrote a compact synopsis [5] of all those notes, but in the process of doing so, I realized there was a couple of fundamental problems with the approach I had used.

One detail that was that I failed to understand, was that we have a requirement for treating a infinitesimal region in the proof, then summing over such regions to express the boundary integral. Understanding that the boundary integral form and its dot product are both evaluated only at the end points of the integral region is an important detail that follows from such an argument (as used in proof of Stokes theorem for a 3D Cartesian space in [7].)

I also realized that my previous attempts could only work for the special cases where the dimension of the integration volume also equaled the dimension of the vector space. The key to resolving this issue is the concept of the tangent space, and an understanding of how to express the projection of the gradient onto the tangent space. These concepts are covered thoroughly in [6], which also introduces Stokes theorem as a special case of a more fundamental theorem for integration of geometric algebraic objects. My objective, for now, is still just to understand the generalization of Stokes theorem, and will leave the fundamental theorem of geometric calculus to later.

Now that these details are understood, the purpose of these notes is to detail the Geometric algebra form of Stokes theorem, covering its generalization to higher dimensional spaces and non-Euclidean metrics (i.e. especially those used for special relativity and electromagnetism), and understanding how to properly deal with curvilinear coordinates. This generalization has the form

## Theorem 1. Stokes’ Theorem

For blades $F \in \bigwedge^{s}$, and $m$ volume element $d^k \mathbf{x}, s < k$,

\begin{aligned}\int_V d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot (\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge F) = \int_{\partial V} d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} \cdot F.\end{aligned}

Here the volume integral is over a $m$ dimensional surface (manifold), $\boldsymbol{\partial}$ is the projection of the gradient onto the tangent space of the manifold, and $\partial V$ indicates integration over the boundary of $V$.

It takes some work to give this more concrete meaning. I will attempt to do so in a gradual fashion, and provide a number of examples that illustrate some of the relevant details.

# Basic notation

A finite vector space, not necessarily Euclidean, with basis $\left\{ {\mathbf{e}_1, \mathbf{e}_2, \cdots} \right\}$ will be assumed to be the generator of the geometric algebra. A dual or reciprocal basis $\left\{ {\mathbf{e}^1, \mathbf{e}^2, \cdots} \right\}$ for this basis can be calculated, defined by the property

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{e}_i \cdot \mathbf{e}^j = {\delta_i}^j.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.1.2)

This is an Euclidean space when $\mathbf{e}_i = \mathbf{e}^i, \forall i$.

To select from a multivector $A$ the grade $k$ portion, say $A_k$ we write

\begin{aligned}A_k = {\left\langle A \right\rangle}_{k}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.1.3)

The scalar portion of a multivector $A$ will be written as

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle A \right\rangle}_{0} \equiv \left\langle A \right\rangle.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.1.4)

The grade selection operators can be used to define the outer and inner products. For blades $U$, and $V$ of grade $r$ and $s$ respectively, these are

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle U V \right\rangle}_{{\left\lvert {r + s} \right\rvert}} \equiv U \wedge V\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.5.5)

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle U V \right\rangle}_{{\left\lvert {r - s} \right\rvert}} \equiv U \cdot V.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.5.5)

Written out explicitly for odd grade blades $A$ (vector, trivector, …), and vector $\mathbf{a}$ the dot and wedge products are respectively

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \wedge A &= \frac{1}{2} (\mathbf{a} A - A \mathbf{a}) \\ \mathbf{a} \cdot A &= \frac{1}{2} (\mathbf{a} A + A \mathbf{a}).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.6)

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \wedge A &= \frac{1}{2} (\mathbf{a} A + A \mathbf{a}) \\ \mathbf{a} \cdot A &= \frac{1}{2} (\mathbf{a} A - A \mathbf{a}).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.7)

It will be useful to employ the cyclic scalar reordering identity for the scalar selection operator

\begin{aligned}\left\langle{{\mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c}}}\right\rangle= \left\langle{{\mathbf{b} \mathbf{c} \mathbf{a}}}\right\rangle= \left\langle{{\mathbf{c} \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b}}}\right\rangle.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.8)

For an $N$ dimensional vector space, a product of $N$ orthonormal (up to a sign) unit vectors is referred to as a pseudoscalar for the space, typically denoted by $I$

\begin{aligned}I = \mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2 \cdots \mathbf{e}_N.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.9)

The pseudoscalar may commute or anticommute with other blades in the space. We may also form a pseudoscalar for a subspace spanned by vectors $\left\{ {\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}, \cdots, \mathbf{c}} \right\}$ by unit scaling the wedge products of those vectors $\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \cdots \wedge \mathbf{c}$.

# Curvilinear coordinates

For our purposes a manifold can be loosely defined as a parameterized surface. For example, a 2D manifold can be considered a surface in an $n$ dimensional vector space, parameterized by two variables

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = \mathbf{x}(a,b) = \mathbf{x}(u^1, u^2).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

Note that the indices here do not represent exponentiation. We can construct a basis for the manifold as

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_i = \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {u^i}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.11)

On the manifold we can calculate a reciprocal basis $\left\{ {\mathbf{x}^i} \right\}$, defined by requiring, at each point on the surface

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^i \cdot \mathbf{x}_j = {\delta^i}_j.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.12)

Associated implicitly with this basis is a curvilinear coordinate representation defined by the projection operation

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^i \mathbf{x}_i,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.13)

(sums over mixed indices are implied). These coordinates can be calculated by taking dot products with the reciprocal frame vectors

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i &= x^j \mathbf{x}_j \cdot \mathbf{x}^i \\ &= x^j {\delta_j}^i \\ &= x^i.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.13)

In this document all coordinates are with respect to a specific curvilinear basis, and not with respect to the standard basis $\left\{ {\mathbf{e}_i} \right\}$ or its dual basis unless otherwise noted.

Similar to the usual notation for derivatives with respect to the standard basis coordinates we form a lower index partial derivative operator

\begin{aligned}\frac{\partial {}}{\partial {u^i}} \equiv \partial_i,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.13)

so that when the complete vector space is spanned by $\left\{ {\mathbf{x}_i} \right\}$ the gradient has the curvilinear representation

\begin{aligned}\boldsymbol{\nabla} = \mathbf{x}^i \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {u^i}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.13)

This can be motivated by noting that the directional derivative is defined by

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \cdot \boldsymbol{\nabla} f(\mathbf{x}) = \lim_{t \rightarrow 0} \frac{f(\mathbf{x} + t \mathbf{a}) - f(\mathbf{x})}{t}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.17)

When the basis $\left\{ {\mathbf{x}_i} \right\}$ does not span the space, the projection of the gradient onto the tangent space at the point of evaluation

\begin{aligned}\boldsymbol{\partial} = \mathbf{x}^i \partial_i = \sum_i \mathbf{x}_i \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {u^i}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.18)

This is called the vector derivative.

See [6] for a more complete discussion of the gradient and vector derivatives in curvilinear coordinates.

# Green’s theorem

Given a two parameter ($u,v$) surface parameterization, the curvilinear coordinate representation of a vector $\mathbf{f}$ has the form

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{f} = f_u \mathbf{x}^u + f_v \mathbf{x}^v + f_\perp \mathbf{x}^\perp.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.19)

We assume that the vector space is of dimension two or greater but otherwise unrestricted, and need not have an Euclidean basis. Here $f_\perp \mathbf{x}^\perp$ denotes the rejection of $\mathbf{f}$ from the tangent space at the point of evaluation. Green’s theorem relates the integral around a closed curve to an “area” integral on that surface

## Theorem 2. Green’s Theorem

\begin{aligned}\mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowright}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{l}=\iint \left( {-\frac{\partial {f_u}}{\partial {v}}+\frac{\partial {f_v}}{\partial {u}}} \right)du dv\end{aligned}

Following the arguments used in [7] for Stokes theorem in three dimensions, we first evaluate the loop integral along the differential element of the surface at the point $\mathbf{x}(u_0, v_0)$ evaluated over the range $(du, dv)$, as shown in the infinitesimal loop of fig. 1.1.

Fig 1.1. Infinitesimal loop integral

Over the infinitesimal area, the loop integral decomposes into

\begin{aligned}\mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowright}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{l}=\int \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_1+\int \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_2+\int \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_3+\int \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_4,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.20)

where the differentials along the curve are

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}d\mathbf{x}_1 &= {\left.{{ \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {u}} }}\right\vert}_{{v = v_0}} du \\ d\mathbf{x}_2 &= {\left.{{ \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {v}} }}\right\vert}_{{u = u_0 + du}} dv \\ d\mathbf{x}_3 &= -{\left.{{ \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {u}} }}\right\vert}_{{v = v_0 + dv}} du \\ d\mathbf{x}_4 &= -{\left.{{ \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {v}} }}\right\vert}_{{u = u_0}} dv.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.21)

It is assumed that the parameterization change $(du, dv)$ is small enough that this loop integral can be considered planar (regardless of the dimension of the vector space). Making use of the fact that $\mathbf{x}^\perp \cdot \mathbf{x}_\alpha = 0$ for $\alpha \in \left\{ {u,v} \right\}$, the loop integral is

\begin{aligned}\mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowright}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{l}=\int\left( {f_u \mathbf{x}^u + f_v \mathbf{x}^v + f_\perp \mathbf{x}^\perp} \right)\cdot\Bigl(\mathbf{x}_u(u, v_0) du - \mathbf{x}_u(u, v_0 + dv) du+\mathbf{x}_v(u_0 + du, v) dv - \mathbf{x}_v(u_0, v) dv\Bigr)=\int f_u(u, v_0) du - f_u(u, v_0 + dv) du+f_v(u_0 + du, v) dv - f_v(u_0, v) dv\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.22)

With the distances being infinitesimal, these differences can be rewritten as partial differentials

\begin{aligned}\mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowright}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{l}=\iint \left( {-\frac{\partial {f_u}}{\partial {v}}+\frac{\partial {f_v}}{\partial {u}}} \right)du dv.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.23)

We can now sum over a larger area as in fig. 1.2

Fig 1.2. Sum of infinitesimal loops

All the opposing oriented loop elements cancel, so the integral around the complete boundary of the surface $\mathbf{x}(u, v)$ is given by the $u,v$ area integral of the partials difference.

We will see that Green’s theorem is a special case of the Curl (Stokes) theorem. This observation will also provide a geometric interpretation of the right hand side area integral of thm. 2, and allow for a coordinate free representation.

Special case:

An important special case of Green’s theorem is for a Euclidean two dimensional space where the vector function is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{f} = P \mathbf{e}_1 + Q \mathbf{e}_2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.24)

Here Green’s theorem takes the form

\begin{aligned}\mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowright}}\int} P dx + Q dy=\iint \left( {\frac{\partial {Q}}{\partial {x}}-\frac{\partial {P}}{\partial {y}}} \right)dx dy.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.25)

# Curl theorem, two volume vector field

Having examined the right hand side of thm. 1 for the very simplest geometric object $\mathbf{f}$, let’s look at the right hand side, the area integral in more detail. We restrict our attention for now to vectors $\mathbf{f}$ still defined by eq. 1.19.

First we need to assign a meaning to $d^2 \mathbf{x}$. By this, we mean the wedge products of the two differential elements. With

\begin{aligned}d\mathbf{x}_i = du^i \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {u^i}} = du^i \mathbf{x}_i,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.26)

that area element is

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x}= d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_2= du^1 du^2 \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.27)

This is the oriented area element that lies in the tangent plane at the point of evaluation, and has the magnitude of the area of that segment of the surface, as depicted in fig. 1.3.

Fig 1.3. Oriented area element tiling of a surface

Observe that we have no requirement to introduce a normal to the surface to describe the direction of the plane. The wedge product provides the information about the orientation of the place in the space, even when the vector space that our vector lies in has dimension greater than three.

Proceeding with the expansion of the dot product of the area element with the curl, using eq. 1.0.6, eq. 1.0.7, and eq. 1.0.8, and a scalar selection operation, we have

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= \left\langle{{d^2 \mathbf{x} \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= \left\langle{{d^2 \mathbf{x}\frac{1}{2}\left( { \stackrel{ \rightarrow }{\boldsymbol{\partial}} \mathbf{f} - \mathbf{f} \stackrel{ \leftarrow }{\boldsymbol{\partial}} } \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\left\langle{{d^2 \mathbf{x} \left( { \mathbf{x}^i \left( { \partial_i \mathbf{f}} \right) - \left( {\partial_i \mathbf{f}} \right) \mathbf{x}^i } \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\left\langle{{\left( { \partial_i \mathbf{f} } \right) d^2 \mathbf{x} \mathbf{x}^i - \left( { \partial_i \mathbf{f} } \right) \mathbf{x}^i d^2 \mathbf{x}}}\right\rangle \\ &= \left\langle{{\left( { \partial_i \mathbf{f} } \right) \left( { d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= \partial_i \mathbf{f} \cdot\left( { d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.28)

Let’s proceed to expand the inner dot product

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i &= du^1 du^2\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i \\ &= du^1 du^2\left( {\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \mathbf{x}^i \mathbf{x}_1-\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \mathbf{x}^i \mathbf{x}_2} \right) \\ &= du^1 du^2\left( {{\delta_2}^i \mathbf{x}_1-{\delta_1}^i \mathbf{x}_2} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.29)

The complete curl term is thus

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=du^1 du^2\left( {\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {u^2}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1-\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {u^1}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2} \right)\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.30)

This almost has the form of eq. 1.23, although that is not immediately obvious. Working backwards, using the shorthand $u = u^1, v = u^2$, we can show that this coordinate representation can be eliminated

\begin{aligned}-du dv\left( {\frac{\partial {f_v}}{\partial {u}} -\frac{\partial {f_u}}{\partial {v}}} \right) &= du dv\left( {\frac{\partial {}}{\partial {v}}\left( {\mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_u} \right)-\frac{\partial {}}{\partial {u}}\left( {\mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_v} \right)} \right) \\ &= du dv\left( {\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {v}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_u-\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {u}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_v+\mathbf{f} \cdot \left( {\frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}_u}}{\partial {v}}-\frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}_v}}{\partial {u}}} \right)} \right) \\ &= du dv \left( {\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {v}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_u-\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {u}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_v+\mathbf{f} \cdot \left( {\frac{\partial^2 \mathbf{x}}{\partial v \partial u}-\frac{\partial^2 \mathbf{x}}{\partial u \partial v}} \right)} \right) \\ &= du dv \left( {\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {v}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_u-\frac{\partial {\mathbf{f}}}{\partial {u}} \cdot \mathbf{x}_v} \right) \\ &= d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.31)

This relates the two parameter surface integral of the curl to the loop integral over its boundary

\begin{aligned}\int d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot (\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f}) = \mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowleft}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{l}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.32)

This is the very simplest special case of Stokes theorem. When written in the general form of Stokes thm. 1

\begin{aligned}\int_A d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right)=\int_{\partial A} d^1 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{f}=\int_{\partial A} \left( { d\mathbf{x}_1 - d\mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.33)

we must remember (the $\partial A$ is to remind us of this) that it is implied that both the vector $\mathbf{f}$ and the differential elements are evaluated on the boundaries of the integration ranges respectively. A more exact statement is

\begin{aligned}\int_{\partial A} d^1 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{f}=\int {\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_1}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^2}}-{\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_2}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^1}}=\int {\left.{{f_1}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^2}} du^1-{\left.{{f_2}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^1}} du^2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.34)

Expanded out in full this is

\begin{aligned}\int {\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_1}}\right\vert}_{{u^2(1)}}-{\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_1}}\right\vert}_{{u^2(0)}}+{\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_2}}\right\vert}_{{u^1(0)}}-{\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}_2}}\right\vert}_{{u^1(1)}},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.35)

which can be cross checked against fig. 1.4 to demonstrate that this specifies a clockwise orientation. For the surface with oriented area $d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_2$, the clockwise loop is designated with line elements (1)-(4), we see that the contributions around this loop (in boxes) match eq. 1.0.35.

Fig 1.4. Clockwise loop

## Example: Green’s theorem, a 2D Cartesian parameterization for a Euclidean space

For a Cartesian 2D Euclidean parameterization of a vector field and the integration space, Stokes theorem should be equivalent to Green’s theorem eq. 1.0.25. Let’s expand both sides of eq. 1.0.32 independently to verify equality. The parameterization is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}(x, y) = x \mathbf{e}_1 + y \mathbf{e}_2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.36)

Here the dual basis is the basis, and the projection onto the tangent space is just the gradient

\begin{aligned}\boldsymbol{\partial} = \boldsymbol{\nabla}= \mathbf{e}_1 \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {x}}+ \mathbf{e}_2 \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {y}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.37)

The volume element is an area weighted pseudoscalar for the space

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} = dx dy \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {x}} \wedge \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {y}} = dx dy \mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.38)

and the curl of a vector $\mathbf{f} = f_1 \mathbf{e}_1 + f_2 \mathbf{e}_2$ is

\begin{aligned}\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f}=\left( {\mathbf{e}_1 \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {x}}+ \mathbf{e}_2 \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {y}}} \right) \wedge\left( {f_1 \mathbf{e}_1 + f_2 \mathbf{e}_2} \right)=\mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2\left( {\frac{\partial {f_2}}{\partial {x}}-\frac{\partial {f_1}}{\partial {y}}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.38)

So, the LHS of Stokes theorem takes the coordinate form

\begin{aligned}\int d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot (\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f}) =\iint dx dy\underbrace{\left\langle{{\mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2}}\right\rangle}_{=-1}\left( {\frac{\partial {f_2}}{\partial {x}}-\frac{\partial {f_1}}{\partial {y}}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.38)

For the RHS, following fig. 1.5, we have

\begin{aligned}\mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowleft}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{x}=f_2(x_0, y) dy+f_1(x, y_1) dx-f_2(x_1, y) dy-f_1(x, y_0) dx=\int dx \left( {f_1(x, y_1)-f_1(x, y_0)} \right)-\int dy \left( {f_2(x_1, y)-f_2(x_0, y)} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.38)

As expected, we can also obtain this by integrating eq. 1.0.38.

Fig 1.5. Euclidean 2D loop

## Example: Cylindrical parameterization

Let’s now consider a cylindrical parameterization of a 4D space with Euclidean metric $++++$ or Minkowski metric $+++-$. For such a space let’s do a brute force expansion of both sides of Stokes theorem to gain some confidence that all is well.

With $\kappa = \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4$, such a space is conveniently parameterized as illustrated in fig. 1.6 as

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}(\rho, \theta, h) = x \mathbf{e}_1 + y \mathbf{e}_2 + \rho \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\kappa \theta}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.42)

Fig 1.6. Cylindrical polar parameterization

Note that the Euclidean case where $\left( {\mathbf{e}_4} \right)^2 = 1$ rejection of the non-axial components of $\mathbf{x}$ expands to

\begin{aligned}\left( { \left( { \mathbf{x} \wedge \mathbf{e}_1 \wedge \mathbf{e}_2} \right) \cdot \mathbf{e}^2 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{e}^1 =\rho \left( { \mathbf{e}_3 \cos\theta + \mathbf{e}_4 \sin \theta } \right),\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.43)

whereas for the Minkowski case where $\left( {\mathbf{e}_4} \right)^2 = -1$ we have a hyperbolic expansion

\begin{aligned}\left( { \left( { \mathbf{x} \wedge \mathbf{e}_1 \wedge \mathbf{e}_2} \right) \cdot \mathbf{e}^2 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{e}^1 =\rho \left( { \mathbf{e}_3 \cosh\theta + \mathbf{e}_4 \sinh \theta } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.44)

Within such a space consider the surface along $x = c, y = d$, for which the vectors are parameterized by

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}(\rho, \theta) = c \mathbf{e}_1 + d \mathbf{e}_2 + \rho \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\kappa \theta}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.45)

The tangent space unit vectors are

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\rho= \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {\rho}} = \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\kappa \theta},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.46)

and

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\theta &= \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {\theta}} \\ &= \rho \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 e^{\kappa \theta} \\ &= \rho \mathbf{e}_4 e^{\kappa \theta}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.47)

Observe that both of these vectors have their origin at the point of evaluation, and aren’t relative to the absolute origin used to parameterize the complete space.

We wish to compute the volume element for the tangent plane. Noting that $\mathbf{e}_3$ and $\mathbf{e}_4$ both anticommute with $\kappa$ we have for $\mathbf{a} \in \text{span} \left\{ {\mathbf{e}_3, \mathbf{e}_4} \right\}$

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} e^{\kappa \theta} = e^{-\kappa \theta} \mathbf{a},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.48)

so

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho &= {\left\langle{{\mathbf{e}_3 e^{\kappa \theta} \rho \mathbf{e}_4 e^{\kappa \theta}}}\right\rangle}_{2} \\ &= \rho {\left\langle{{\mathbf{e}_3 e^{\kappa \theta} e^{-\kappa \theta} \mathbf{e}_4}}\right\rangle}_{2} \\ &= \rho \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.49)

The tangent space volume element is thus

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} = \rho d\rho d\theta \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.50)

With the tangent plane vectors both perpendicular we don’t need the general lemma 6 to compute the reciprocal basis, but can do so by inspection

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^\rho = e^{-\kappa \theta} \mathbf{e}^3,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.51)

and

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^\theta = e^{-\kappa \theta} \mathbf{e}^4 \frac{1}{{\rho}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.52)

Observe that the latter depends on the metric signature.

The vector derivative, the projection of the gradient on the tangent space, is

\begin{aligned}\boldsymbol{\partial} &= \mathbf{x}^\rho \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {\rho}}+\mathbf{x}^\theta \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {\theta}} \\ &= e^{-\kappa \theta} \left( {\mathbf{e}^3 \partial_\rho + \frac{\mathbf{e}^4}{\rho} \partial_\theta } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.52)

From this we see that acting with the vector derivative on a scalar radial only dependent function $f(\rho)$ is a vector function that has a radial direction, whereas the action of the vector derivative on an azimuthal only dependent function $g(\theta)$ is a vector function that has only an azimuthal direction. The interpretation of the geometric product action of the vector derivative on a vector function is not as simple since the product will be a multivector.

Expanding the curl in coordinates is messier, but yields in the end when tackled with sufficient care

\begin{aligned}\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} &= {\left\langle{{e^{-\kappa \theta}\left( { e^3 \partial_\rho + \frac{e^4}{\rho} \partial_\theta} \right)\left( { \not{{e_1 x}} + \not{{e_2 y}} + e_3 e^{\kappa \theta } f_\rho + \frac{e^4}{\rho} e^{\kappa \theta } f_\theta} \right)}}\right\rangle}_{2} \\ &= \not{{{\left\langle{{e^{-\kappa \theta} e^3 \partial_\rho \left( { e_3 e^{\kappa \theta } f_\rho} \right)}}\right\rangle}_{2}}}+{\left\langle{{\not{{e^{-\kappa \theta}}} e^3 \partial_\rho \left( { \frac{e^4}{\rho} \not{{e^{\kappa \theta }}} f_\theta} \right)}}\right\rangle}_{2}+{\left\langle{{e^{-\kappa \theta}\frac{e^4}{\rho} \partial_\theta\left( { e_3 e^{\kappa \theta } f_\rho} \right)}}\right\rangle}_{2}+{\left\langle{{e^{-\kappa \theta}\frac{e^4}{\rho} \partial_\theta\left( { \frac{e^4}{\rho} e^{\kappa \theta } f_\theta} \right)}}\right\rangle}_{2} \\ &= \mathbf{e}^3 \mathbf{e}^4 \left( {-\frac{f_\theta}{\rho^2} + \frac{1}{{\rho}} \partial_\rho f_\theta- \frac{1}{{\rho}} \partial_\theta f_\rho} \right)+ \frac{1}{{\rho^2}}{\left\langle{{e^{-\kappa \theta} \left( {\mathbf{e}^4} \right)^2\left( {\mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 f_\theta+ \not{{\partial_\theta f_\theta}}} \right)e^{\kappa \theta}}}\right\rangle}_{2} \\ &= \mathbf{e}^3 \mathbf{e}^4 \left( {-\frac{f_\theta}{\rho^2} + \frac{1}{{\rho}} \partial_\rho f_\theta- \frac{1}{{\rho}} \partial_\theta f_\rho} \right)+ \frac{1}{{\rho^2}}{\left\langle{{\not{{e^{-\kappa \theta} }}\mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}^4 f_\theta\not{{e^{\kappa \theta}}}}}\right\rangle}_{2} \\ &= \frac{\mathbf{e}^3 \mathbf{e}^4 }{\rho}\left( {\partial_\rho f_\theta- \partial_\theta f_\rho} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.52)

After all this reduction, we can now state in coordinates the LHS of Stokes theorem explicitly

\begin{aligned}\int d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= \int \rho d\rho d\theta \left\langle{{\mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}^3 \mathbf{e}^4 }}\right\rangle\frac{1}{{\rho}}\left( {\partial_\rho f_\theta- \partial_\theta f_\rho} \right) \\ &= \int d\rho d\theta\left( {\partial_\theta f_\rho-\partial_\rho f_\theta} \right) \\ &= \int d\rho {\left.{{f_\rho}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta \theta}}- \int d\theta{\left.{{f_\theta}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta \rho}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.52)

Now compare this to the direct evaluation of the loop integral portion of Stokes theorem. Expressing this using eq. 1.0.34, we have the same result

\begin{aligned}\int d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=\int {\left.{{f_\rho}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta \theta}} d\rho-{\left.{{f_\theta}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta \rho}} d\theta\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.56)

This example highlights some of the power of Stokes theorem, since the reduction of the volume element differential form was seen to be quite a chore (and easy to make mistakes doing.)

## Example: Composition of boost and rotation

Working in a $\bigwedge^{1,3}$ space with basis $\left\{ {\gamma_0, \gamma_1, \gamma_2, \gamma_3} \right\}$ where $\left( {\gamma_0} \right)^2 = 1$ and $\left( {\gamma_k} \right)^2 = -1, k \in \left\{ {1,2,3} \right\}$, an active composition of boost and rotation has the form

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}' &= e^{i\alpha/2} \mathbf{x}_0 e^{-i\alpha/2} \\ \mathbf{x}'' &= e^{-j\theta/2} \mathbf{x}' e^{j\theta/2}\end{aligned},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.57)

where $i$ is a bivector of a timelike unit vector and perpendicular spacelike unit vector, and $j$ is a bivector of two perpendicular spacelike unit vectors. For example, $i = \gamma_0 \gamma_1$ and $j = \gamma_1 \gamma_2$. For such $i,j$ the respective Lorentz transformation matrices are

\begin{aligned}{\begin{bmatrix}x^0 \\ x^1 \\ x^2 \\ x^3 \end{bmatrix}}'=\begin{bmatrix}\cosh\alpha & -\sinh\alpha & 0 & 0 \\ -\sinh\alpha & \cosh\alpha & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}\begin{bmatrix}x^0 \\ x^1 \\ x^2 \\ x^3 \end{bmatrix},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.58)

and

\begin{aligned}{\begin{bmatrix}x^0 \\ x^1 \\ x^2 \\ x^3 \end{bmatrix}}''=\begin{bmatrix}1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \cos\theta & \sin\theta & 0 \\ 0 & -\sin\theta & \cos\theta & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}{\begin{bmatrix}x^0 \\ x^1 \\ x^2 \\ x^3 \end{bmatrix}}'.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.59)

Let’s calculate the tangent space vectors for this parameterization, assuming that the particle is at an initial spacetime position of $\mathbf{x}_0$. That is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = e^{-j\theta/2} e^{i\alpha/2} \mathbf{x}_0e^{-i\alpha/2} e^{j\theta/2}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.60)

To calculate the tangent space vectors for this subspace we note that

\begin{aligned}\frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}'}}{\partial {\alpha}} = \frac{i}{2} \mathbf{x}_0 - \mathbf{x}_0 \frac{i}{2} = i \cdot \mathbf{x}_0,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.61)

and

\begin{aligned}\frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}''}}{\partial {\theta}} = -\frac{j}{2} \mathbf{x}' + \mathbf{x}' \frac{j}{2} = \mathbf{x}' \cdot j.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.62)

The tangent space vectors are therefore

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\alpha &= e^{-j\theta/2} \left( { i \cdot \mathbf{x}_0 } \right)e^{j\theta/2} \\ \mathbf{x}_\theta &= \left( {e^{i\alpha/2} \mathbf{x}_0e^{-i\alpha/2} } \right) \cdot j.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.63)

Continuing a specific example where $i = \gamma_0\gamma_1, j = \gamma_1 \gamma_2$ let’s also pick $\mathbf{x}_0 = \gamma_0$, the spacetime position of a particle at the origin of a frame at that frame’s $c t = 1$. The tangent space vectors for the subspace parameterized by this transformation and this initial position is then reduced to

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\alpha = -\gamma_1 e^{j \theta} = \gamma_1 \sin\theta + \gamma_2 \cos\theta,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.63)

and

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\theta &= \left( { \gamma_0 e^{-i \alpha} } \right) \cdot j \\ &= \left( { \gamma_0\left( { \cosh\alpha - \gamma_0 \gamma_1 \sinh\alpha } \right)} \right) \cdot \left( { \gamma_1 \gamma_2} \right) \\ &= {\left\langle{{ \left( { \gamma_0 \cosh\alpha - \gamma_1 \sinh\alpha } \right) \gamma_1 \gamma_2 }}\right\rangle}_{1} \\ &= \gamma_2 \sinh\alpha.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.63)

By inspection the dual basis for this parameterization is

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^\alpha &= \gamma_1 e^{j \theta} \\ \mathbf{x}^\theta &= \frac{\gamma^2}{\sinh\alpha} \end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.66)

So, Stokes theorem, applied to a spacetime vector $\mathbf{f}$, for this subspace is

\begin{aligned}\int d\alpha d\theta \sinh\alpha \sin\theta \left( { \gamma_1 \gamma_2 } \right) \cdot \left( {\left( {\gamma_1 e^{j \theta} \partial_\alpha + \frac{\gamma^2}{\sinh\alpha} \partial_\theta} \right)\wedge \mathbf{f}} \right)=\int d\alpha {\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot \Bigl( {\gamma^1 e^{j \theta}} \Bigr)}}\right\vert}_{{\theta_0}}^{{\theta_1}}-\int d\theta {\left.{{\mathbf{f} \cdot \Bigl( { \gamma_2 \sinh\alpha } \Bigr)}}\right\vert}_{{\alpha_0}}^{{\alpha_1}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.67)

Since the point is to avoid the curl integral, we did not actually have to state it explicitly, nor was there any actual need to calculate the dual basis.

## Example: Dual representation in three dimensions

It’s clear that there is a projective nature to the differential form $d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( {\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right)$. This projective nature allows us, in three dimensions, to re-express Stokes theorem using the gradient instead of the vector derivative, and to utilize the cross product and a normal direction to the plane.

When we parameterize a normal direction to the tangent space, so that for a 2D tangent space spanned by curvilinear coordinates $\mathbf{x}_1$ and $\mathbf{x}_2$ the vector $\mathbf{x}^3$ is normal to both, we can write our vector as

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{f} = f_1 \mathbf{x}^1 + f_2 \mathbf{x}^2 + f_3 \mathbf{x}^3,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.68)

and express the orientation of the tangent space area element in terms of a pseudoscalar that includes this normal direction

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 =\mathbf{x}^3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) =\mathbf{x}^3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.69)

Inserting this into an expansion of the curl form we have

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= du^1 du^2 \left\langle{{\mathbf{x}^3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)\left( {\left( {\sum_{i=1,2} x^i \partial_i} \right)\wedge\mathbf{f}} \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= du^1 du^2 \mathbf{x}^3 \cdot \left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)\cdot \left( {\boldsymbol{\nabla} \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right)-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)\cdot \left( {\mathbf{x}^3 \partial_3 \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right)} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.69)

Observe that this last term, the contribution of the component of the gradient perpendicular to the tangent space, has no $\mathbf{x}_3$ components

\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)\cdot \left( {\mathbf{x}^3 \partial_3 \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right) &= \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)\cdot \left( {\mathbf{x}^3 \wedge \partial_3 \mathbf{f}} \right) \\ &= \left( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^3} \right)\cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \\ &= \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \\ &= \mathbf{x}_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f} } \right)-\mathbf{x}_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f} } \right),\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.69)

leaving

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=du^1 du^2 \mathbf{x}^3 \cdot \left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\nabla} \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right)} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.69)

Now scale the normal vector and its dual to have unit norm as follows

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^3 &= \alpha \hat{\mathbf{x}}^3 \\ \mathbf{x}_3 &= \frac{1}{{\alpha}} \hat{\mathbf{x}}_3,\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.73)

so that for $\beta > 0$, the volume element can be

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \hat{\mathbf{x}}_3 = \beta I.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.73)

This scaling choice is illustrated in fig. 1.7, and represents the “outwards” normal. With such a scaling choice we have

Fig 1.7. Outwards normal

\begin{aligned}\beta du^1 du^2 = dA,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.75)

and almost have the desired cross product representation

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=dA \hat{\mathbf{x}}^3 \cdot \left( { I \cdot \left( {\boldsymbol{\nabla} \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right) } \right)=dA \hat{\mathbf{x}}^3 \cdot \left( { I \left( {\boldsymbol{\nabla} \wedge \mathbf{f}} \right) } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.76)

With the duality identity $\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} = I \left( {\mathbf{a} \times \mathbf{b}} \right)$, we have the traditional 3D representation of Stokes theorem

\begin{aligned}\int d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=-\int dA \hat{\mathbf{x}}^3 \cdot \left( {\boldsymbol{\nabla} \times \mathbf{f}} \right) = \mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowleft}}\int} \mathbf{f} \cdot d\mathbf{l}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.77)

Note that the orientation of the loop integral in the traditional statement of the 3D Stokes theorem is counterclockwise instead of clockwise, as written here.

# Stokes theorem, three variable volume element parameterization

We can restate the identity of thm. 1 in an equivalent dot product form.

\begin{aligned}\int_V \left( { d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right) \cdot \partial_i F = \int_{\partial V} d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} \cdot F.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.78)

Here $d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} = \sum_i d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i$, with the implicit assumption that it and the blade $F$ that it is dotted with, are both evaluated at the end points of integration variable $u^i$ that has been integrated against.

We’ve seen one specific example of this above in the expansions of eq. 1.28, and eq. 1.29, however, the equivalent result of eq. 1.0.78, somewhat magically, applies to any degree blade and volume element provided the degree of the blade is less than that of the volume element (i.e. $s < k$). That magic follows directly from lemma 1.

As an expositional example, consider a three variable volume element parameterization, and a vector blade $\mathbf{f}$

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= \left( { d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= du^1 du^2 du^3\left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= du^1 du^2 du^3\left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) {\delta_3}^i-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) {\delta_2}^i+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) {\delta_1}^i} \right) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= du^1 du^2 du^3\left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.78)

It should not be surprising that this has the structure found in the theory of differential forms. Using the differentials for each of the parameterization “directions”, we can write this dot product expansion as

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=\left( {du^3 \left( { d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}-du^2 \left( { d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}+du^1 \left( { d\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.78)

Observe that the sign changes with each element of $d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_3$ that is skipped. In differential forms, the wedge product composition of 1-forms is an abstract quantity. Here the differentials are just vectors, and their wedge product represents an oriented volume element. This interpretation is likely available in the theory of differential forms too, but is arguably less obvious.

## Digression

As was the case with the loop integral, we expect that the coordinate representation has a representation that can be expressed as a number of antisymmetric terms. A bit of experimentation shows that such a sum, after dropping the parameter space volume element factor, is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_1 \left( { -\partial_2 f_3 + \partial_3 f_2 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_2 \left( { -\partial_3 f_1 + \partial_1 f_3 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_3 \left( { -\partial_1 f_2 + \partial_2 f_1 } \right) &= \mathbf{x}_1 \left( { -\partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 + \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_2 \left( { -\partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 + \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_3 \left( { -\partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 + \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 } \right) \\ &= \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 -\mathbf{x}_2 \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 } \right)+\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 -\mathbf{x}_1 \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 -\mathbf{x}_3 \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \\ &= \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.78)

To proceed with the integration, we must again consider an infinitesimal volume element, for which the partial can be evaluated as the difference of the endpoints, with all else held constant. For this three variable parameterization, say, $(u,v,w)$, let’s delimit such an infinitesimal volume element by the parameterization ranges $[u_0,u_0 + du]$, $[v_0,v_0 + dv]$, $[w_0,w_0 + dw]$. The integral is

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\int_{u = u_0}^{u_0 + du}\int_{v = v_0}^{v_0 + dv}\int_{w = w_0}^{w_0 + dw}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)&=\int_{u = u_0}^{u_0 + du}du\int_{v = v_0}^{v_0 + dv}dv{\left.{{ \Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_u \wedge \mathbf{x}_v } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f} } \Bigr) }}\right\vert}_{{w = w_0}}^{{w_0 + dw}} \\ &-\int_{u = u_0}^{u_0 + du}du\int_{w = w_0}^{w_0 + dw}dw{\left.{{\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_u \wedge \mathbf{x}_w } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f} } \Bigr) }}\right\vert}_{{v = v_0}}^{{v_0 + dv}} \\ &+\int_{v = v_0}^{v_0 + dv}dv\int_{w = w_0}^{w_0 + dw}dw{\left.{{\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_v \wedge \mathbf{x}_w } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f} } \Bigr) }}\right\vert}_{{u = u_0}}^{{u_0 + du}}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.82)

Extending this over the ranges $[u_0,u_0 + \Delta u]$, $[v_0,v_0 + \Delta v]$, $[w_0,w_0 + \Delta w]$, we have proved Stokes thm. 1 for vectors and a three parameter volume element, provided we have a surface element of the form

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} = {\left. \Bigl( {d\mathbf{x}_u \wedge d\mathbf{x}_v } \Bigr) \right\vert}_{w = w_0}^{w_1}-{\left. \Bigl( {d\mathbf{x}_u \wedge d\mathbf{x}_w } \Bigr) \right\vert}_{v = v_0}^{v_1}+{\left. \Bigl( {d\mathbf{x}_v \wedge \mathbf{x}_w } \Bigr) \right\vert}_{ u = u_0 }^{u_1},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.82)

where the evaluation of the dot products with $\mathbf{f}$ are also evaluated at the same points.

## Example: Euclidean spherical polar parameterization of 3D subspace

Consider an Euclidean space where a 3D subspace is parameterized using spherical coordinates, as in

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}(x, \rho, \theta, \phi) = \mathbf{e}_1 x + \mathbf{e}_4 \rho \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta} \right)=\left( {x, \rho \sin\theta \cos\phi, \rho \sin\theta \sin\phi, \rho \cos\theta} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.84)

The tangent space basis for the subspace situated at some fixed $x = x_0$, is easy to calculate, and is found to be

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\rho &= \left( {0, \sin\theta \cos\phi, \sin\theta \sin\phi, \cos\theta} \right) =\mathbf{e}_4 \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\theta &= \rho \left( {0, \cos\theta \cos\phi, \cos\theta \sin\phi, - \sin\theta} \right) =\rho \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta } \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi &=\rho \left( {0, -\sin\theta \sin\phi, \sin\theta \cos\phi, 0} \right)= \rho \sin\theta \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.85)

While we can use the general relation of lemma 7 to compute the reciprocal basis. That is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} = \left( { \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} } \right) \frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} }}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.86)

However, a naive attempt at applying this without algebraic software is a route that requires a lot of care, and is easy to make mistakes doing. In this case it is really not necessary since the tangent space basis only requires scaling to orthonormalize, satisfying for $i,j \in \left\{ {\rho, \theta, \phi} \right\}$

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_i \cdot \mathbf{x}_j =\begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \rho^2 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & \rho^2 \sin^2 \theta \end{bmatrix}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.87)

This allows us to read off the dual basis for the tangent volume by inspection

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^\rho &=\mathbf{e}_4 \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}^\theta &= \frac{1}{{\rho}} \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta } \right) \\ \mathbf{x}^\phi &=\frac{1}{{\rho \sin\theta}} \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.88)

Should we wish to explicitly calculate the curl on the tangent space, we would need these. The area and volume elements are also messy to calculate manually. This expansion can be found in the Mathematica notebook \nbref{sphericalSurfaceAndVolumeElements.nb}, and is

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi &=\rho^2 \sin\theta \left( \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 \sin\theta \sin\phi + \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \cos\theta + \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 \sin\theta \cos\phi \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho &=\rho \sin\theta \left(-\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \sin\theta -\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_4 \cos\theta \sin\phi +\mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4\cos\theta \cos\phi \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\theta &= -\mathbf{e}_4 \rho \left(\mathbf{e}_2\cos\phi +\mathbf{e}_3\sin\phi \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi &= \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 \rho^2 \sin\theta \end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.89)

Those area elements have a Geometric algebra factorization that are perhaps useful

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi &=-\rho^2 \sin\theta \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \exp\left( {-\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho &=\rho \sin\theta \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}\exp\left( {\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \theta} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\theta &= -\rho \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}\end{aligned}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.90)

One of the beauties of Stokes theorem is that we don’t actually have to calculate the dual basis on the tangent space to proceed with the integration. For that calculation above, where we had a normal tangent basis, I still used software was used as an aid, so it is clear that this can generally get pretty messy.

To apply Stokes theorem to a vector field we can use eq. 1.0.82 to write down the integral directly

\begin{aligned}\int_V d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= \int_{\partial V} d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{f} \\ &= \int {\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f} }}\right\vert}_{{\rho = \rho_0}}^{{\rho_1}} d\theta d\phi+\int{\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f} }}\right\vert}_{{\theta = \theta_0}}^{{\theta_1}} d\phi d\rho+\int{\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\theta } \right) \cdot \mathbf{f} }}\right\vert}_{{\phi = \phi_0}}^{{\phi_1}} d\rho d\theta.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.90)

Observe that eq. 1.0.90 is a vector valued integral that expands to

\begin{aligned}\int {\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\theta f_\phi - \mathbf{x}_\phi f_\theta } \right) }}\right\vert}_{{\rho = \rho_0}}^{{\rho_1}} d\theta d\phi+\int {\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\phi f_\rho - \mathbf{x}_\rho f_\phi } \right) }}\right\vert}_{{\theta = \theta_0}}^{{\theta_1}} d\phi d\rho+\int {\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\rho f_\theta - \mathbf{x}_\theta f_\rho } \right) }}\right\vert}_{{\phi = \phi_0}}^{{\phi_1}} d\rho d\theta.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.92)

This could easily be a difficult integral to evaluate since the vectors $\mathbf{x}_i$ evaluated at the endpoints are still functions of two parameters. An easier integral would result from the application of Stokes theorem to a bivector valued field, say $B$, for which we have

\begin{aligned}\int_V d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right) &= \int_{\partial V} d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot B \\ &= \int {\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi } \right) \cdot B }}\right\vert}_{{\rho = \rho_0}}^{{\rho_1}} d\theta d\phi+\int{\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho } \right) \cdot B }}\right\vert}_{{\theta = \theta_0}}^{{\theta_1}} d\phi d\rho+\int{\left.{{ \left( { \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\theta } \right) \cdot B }}\right\vert}_{{\phi = \phi_0}}^{{\phi_1}} d\rho d\theta \\ &= \int {\left.{{ B_{\phi \theta} }}\right\vert}_{{\rho = \rho_0}}^{{\rho_1}} d\theta d\phi+\int{\left.{{ B_{\rho \phi} }}\right\vert}_{{\theta = \theta_0}}^{{\theta_1}} d\phi d\rho+\int{\left.{{ B_{\theta \rho} }}\right\vert}_{{\phi = \phi_0}}^{{\phi_1}} d\rho d\theta.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.92)

There is a geometric interpretation to these oriented area integrals, especially when written out explicitly in terms of the differentials along the parameterization directions. Pulling out a sign explicitly to match the geometry (as we had to also do for the line integrals in the two parameter volume element case), we can write this as

\begin{aligned}\int_{\partial V} d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot B = -\int {\left.{{ \left( { d\mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge d\mathbf{x}_\theta } \right) \cdot B }}\right\vert}_{{\rho = \rho_0}}^{{\rho_1}} -\int{\left.{{ \left( { d\mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge d\mathbf{x}_\phi } \right) \cdot B }}\right\vert}_{{\theta = \theta_0}}^{{\theta_1}} -\int{\left.{{ \left( { d\mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge d\mathbf{x}_\rho } \right) \cdot B }}\right\vert}_{{\phi = \phi_0}}^{{\phi_1}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.94)

When written out in this differential form, each of the respective area elements is an oriented area along one of the faces of the parameterization volume, much like the line integral that results from a two parameter volume curl integral. This is visualized in fig. 1.8. In this figure, faces (1) and (3) are “top faces”, those with signs matching the tops of the evaluation ranges eq. 1.0.94, whereas face (2) is a bottom face with a sign that is correspondingly reversed.

Fig 1.8. Boundary faces of a spherical parameterization region

## Example: Minkowski hyperbolic-spherical polar parameterization of 3D subspace

Working with a three parameter volume element in a Minkowski space does not change much. For example in a 4D space with $\left( {\mathbf{e}_4} \right)^2 = -1$, we can employ a hyperbolic-spherical parameterization similar to that used above for the 4D Euclidean space

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}(x, \rho, \alpha, \phi)=\left\{ {x, \rho \sinh \alpha \cos\phi, \rho \sinh \alpha \sin\phi, \rho \cosh \alpha} \right\}=\mathbf{e}_1 x + \mathbf{e}_4 \rho \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.95)

This has tangent space basis elements

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\rho &= \sinh\alpha \left( { \cos\phi \mathbf{e}_2 + \sin\phi \mathbf{e}_3 } \right) + \cosh\alpha \mathbf{e}_4 = \mathbf{e}_4 \exp\left( {\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\alpha &=\rho \cosh\alpha \left( { \cos\phi \mathbf{e}_2 + \sin\phi \mathbf{e}_3} \right) + \rho \sinh\alpha \mathbf{e}_4=\rho \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \exp\left( {-\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi &=\rho \sinh\alpha \left( { \mathbf{e}_3 \cos\phi - \mathbf{e}_2 \sin\phi} \right) = \rho\sinh\alpha \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.96)

This is a normal basis, but again not orthonormal. Specifically, for $i,j \in \left\{ {\rho, \theta, \phi} \right\}$ we have

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_i \cdot \mathbf{x}_j =\begin{bmatrix}-1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \rho^2 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & \rho^2 \sinh^2 \alpha \end{bmatrix},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.97)

where we see that the radial vector $\mathbf{x}_\rho$ is timelike. We can form the dual basis again by inspection

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\rho &= -\mathbf{e}_4 \exp\left( {\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\alpha &= \frac{1}{{\rho}} \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \exp\left( {-\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi &= \frac{1}{{\rho\sinh\alpha}} \mathbf{e}_3 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.98)

The area elements are

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\alpha \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi &=\rho^2 \sinh\alpha \left(-\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_3 \sinh\alpha \cos\phi+\cosh\alpha \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3+\sinh\alpha \sin\phi \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_4\right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho &=\rho \sinh\alpha \left(-\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \sinh\alpha-\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_4 \cosh\alpha \sin\phi+\cosh\alpha \cos\phi \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4\right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\alpha &=-\mathbf{e}_4 \rho \left(\cos\phi \mathbf{e}_2+\sin\phi \mathbf{e}_3\right),\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.99)

or

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\alpha \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi &=\rho^2 \sinh\alpha \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \exp\left( { \mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{-\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha } \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi \wedge \mathbf{x}_\rho &=\rho\sinh\alpha \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \exp\left( {\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi} \alpha} \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\alpha &=-\mathbf{e}_4 \mathbf{e}_2 \rho e^{\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \phi}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.100)

The volume element also reduces nicely, and is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\rho \wedge \mathbf{x}_\alpha \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi = \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \mathbf{e}_4 \rho^2 \sinh\alpha.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.101)

The area and volume element reductions were once again messy, done in software using \nbref{sphericalSurfaceAndVolumeElementsMinkowski.nb}. However, we really only need eq. 1.0.96 to perform the Stokes integration.

# Stokes theorem, four variable volume element parameterization

Volume elements for up to four parameters are likely of physical interest, with the four volume elements of interest for relativistic physics in $\bigwedge^{3,1}$ spaces. For example, we may wish to use a parameterization $u^1 = x, u^2 = y, u^3 = z, u^4 = \tau = c t$, with a four volume

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x}=d\mathbf{x}_x \wedge d\mathbf{x}_y \wedge d\mathbf{x}_z \wedge d\mathbf{x}_\tau,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.102)

We follow the same procedure to calculate the corresponding boundary surface “area” element (with dimensions of volume in this case). This is

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= \left( { d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= du^1 du^2 du^3 du^4\left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \right) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= du^1 du^2 du^3 du_4\left( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) {\delta_4}^i-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) {\delta_3}^i+\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) {\delta_2}^i-\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) {\delta_1}^i} \right) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= du^1 du^2 du^3 du^4\left( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_4 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.103)

Our boundary value surface element is therefore

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} = \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3- \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4+ \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4- \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.104)

where it is implied that this (and the dot products with $\mathbf{f}$) are evaluated on the boundaries of the integration ranges of the omitted index. This same boundary form can be used for vector, bivector and trivector variations of Stokes theorem.

# Duality and its relation to the pseudoscalar.

Looking to eq. 1.0.181 of lemma 6, and scaling the wedge product $\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}$ by its absolute magnitude, we can express duality using that scaled bivector as a pseudoscalar for the plane that spans $\left\{ {\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}} \right\}$. Let’s introduce a subscript notation for such scaled blades

\begin{aligned}I_{\mathbf{a}\mathbf{b}} = \frac{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}}{\left\lvert {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right\rvert}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.105)

This allows us to express the unit vector in the direction of $\mathbf{a}^{*}$ as

\begin{aligned}\widehat{\mathbf{a}^{*}} = \hat{\mathbf{b}} \frac{\left\lvert {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right\rvert}{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}}= \hat{\mathbf{b}} \frac{1}{{I_{\mathbf{a} \mathbf{b}}}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.106)

Following the pattern of eq. 1.0.181, it is clear how to express the dual vectors for higher dimensional subspaces. For example

or for the unit vector in the direction of $\mathbf{a}^{*}$,

\begin{aligned}\widehat{\mathbf{a}^{*}} = I_{\mathbf{b} \mathbf{c}} \frac{1}{{I_{\mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c}} }}.\end{aligned}

# Divergence theorem.

When the curl integral is a scalar result we are able to apply duality relationships to obtain the divergence theorem for the corresponding space. We will be able to show that a relationship of the following form holds

\begin{aligned}\int_V dV \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f} = \int_{\partial V} dA_i \hat{\mathbf{n}}^i \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.107)

Here $\mathbf{f}$ is a vector, $\hat{\mathbf{n}}^i$ is normal to the boundary surface, and $dA_i$ is the area of this bounding surface element. We wish to quantify these more precisely, especially because the orientation of the normal vectors are metric dependent. Working a few specific examples will show the pattern nicely, but it is helpful to first consider some aspects of the general case.

First note that, for a scalar Stokes integral we are integrating the vector derivative curl of a blade $F \in \bigwedge^{k-1}$ over a k-parameter volume element. Because the dimension of the space matches the number of parameters, the projection of the gradient onto the tangent space is exactly that gradient

\begin{aligned}\int_V d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot (\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge F) =\int_V d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot (\boldsymbol{\nabla} \wedge F).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.108)

Multiplication of $F$ by the pseudoscalar will always produce a vector. With the introduction of such a dual vector, as in

\begin{aligned}F = I \mathbf{f},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.108)

Stokes theorem takes the form

\begin{aligned}\int_V d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot {\left\langle{{\boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f}}}\right\rangle}_{k}= \int_{\partial V} \left\langle{{ d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} I \mathbf{f}}}\right\rangle,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.108)

or

\begin{aligned}\int_V \left\langle{{ d^k \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f}}}\right\rangle= \int_{\partial V} \left( { d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} I} \right) \cdot \mathbf{f},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.108)

where we will see that the vector $d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} I$ can roughly be characterized as a normal to the boundary surface. Using primes to indicate the scope of the action of the gradient, cyclic permutation within the scalar selection operator can be used to factor out the pseudoscalar

\begin{aligned}\int_V \left\langle{{ d^k \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f}}}\right\rangle &= \int_V \left\langle{{ \mathbf{f}' d^k \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla}' I}}\right\rangle \\ &= \int_V {\left\langle{{ \mathbf{f}' d^k \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla}'}}\right\rangle}_{k} I \\ &= \int_V(-1)^{k+1} d^k \mathbf{x} \left( { \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f}} \right) I \\ &= (-1)^{k+1} I^2\int_V dV\left( { \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.108)

The second last step uses lemma 8, and the last writes $d^k \mathbf{x} = I^2 \left\lvert {d^k \mathbf{x}} \right\rvert = I^2 dV$, where we have assumed (without loss of generality) that $d^k \mathbf{x}$ has the same orientation as the pseudoscalar for the space. We also assume that the parameterization is non-degenerate over the integration volume (i.e. no $d\mathbf{x}_i = 0$), so the sign of this product cannot change.

Let’s now return to the normal vector $d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} I$. With $d^{k-1} u_i = du^1 du^2 \cdots du^{i-1} du^{i+1} \cdots du^k$ (the $i$ indexed differential omitted), and $I_{ab\cdots c} = (\mathbf{x}_a \wedge \mathbf{x}_b \wedge \cdots \wedge \mathbf{x}_c)/\left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_a \wedge \mathbf{x}_b \wedge \cdots \wedge \mathbf{x}_c} \right\rvert$, we have

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} I&=d^{k-1} u_i \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \cdots \wedge \mathbf{x}_k} \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i I \\ &= I_{1 2 \cdots (k-1)} I \left\lvert {d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \cdots \wedge d\mathbf{x}_{k-1} } \right\rvert \\ &\quad -I_{1 \cdots (k-2) k} I \left\lvert {d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \cdots \wedge d\mathbf{x}_{k-2} \wedge d\mathbf{x}_k} \right\rvert+ \cdots\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.113)

We’ve seen in eq. 1.0.106 and lemma 7 that the dual of vector $\mathbf{a}$ with respect to the unit pseudoscalar $I_{\mathbf{b} \cdots \mathbf{c} \mathbf{d}}$ in a subspace spanned by $\left\{ {\mathbf{a}, \cdots \mathbf{c}, \mathbf{d}} \right\}$ is

\begin{aligned}\widehat{\mathbf{a}^{*}} = I_{\mathbf{b} \cdots \mathbf{c} \mathbf{d}} \frac{1}{{ I_{\mathbf{a} \cdots \mathbf{c} \mathbf{d}} }},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.114)

or

\begin{aligned}\widehat{\mathbf{a}^{*}} I_{\mathbf{a} \cdots \mathbf{c} \mathbf{d}}^2=I_{\mathbf{b} \cdots \mathbf{c} \mathbf{d}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.115)

This allows us to write

\begin{aligned}d^{k-1} \mathbf{x} I= I^2 \sum_i \widehat{\mathbf{x}^i} d{A'}_i\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.116)

where $d{A'}_i = \pm dA_i$, and $dA_i$ is the area of the boundary area element normal to $\mathbf{x}^i$. Note that the $I^2$ term will now cancel cleanly from both sides of the divergence equation, taking both the metric and the orientation specific dependencies with it.

This leaves us with

\begin{aligned}\int_V dV \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f} = (-1)^{k+1} \int_{\partial V} d{A'}_i \widehat{\mathbf{x}^i} \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.117)

To spell out the details, we have to be very careful with the signs. However, that is a job best left for specific examples.

## Example: 2D divergence theorem

Let’s start back at

\begin{aligned}\int_A \left\langle{{ d^2 \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f} }}\right\rangle = \int_{\partial A} \left( { d^1 \mathbf{x} I} \right) \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.118)

On the left our integral can be rewritten as

\begin{aligned}\int_A \left\langle{{ d^2 \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f} }}\right\rangle &= -\int_A \left\langle{{ d^2 \mathbf{x} I \boldsymbol{\nabla} \mathbf{f} }}\right\rangle \\ &= -\int_A d^2 \mathbf{x} I \left( { \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f} } \right) \\ &= - I^2 \int_A dA \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.119)

where $d^2 \mathbf{x} = I dA$ and we pick the pseudoscalar with the same orientation as the volume (area in this case) element $I = (\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2)/\left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2} \right\rvert$.

For the boundary form we have

\begin{aligned}d^1 \mathbf{x} = du^2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^1+ du^1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^2= -du^2 \mathbf{x}_2 +du^1 \mathbf{x}_1.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.120)

The duality relations for the tangent space are

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^2 &= \mathbf{x}_1 \frac{1}{{\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1}} \\ \mathbf{x}^1 &= \mathbf{x}_2 \frac{1}{{\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2}}\end{aligned},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.121)

or

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\widehat{\mathbf{x}^2} &= -\widehat{\mathbf{x}_1} \frac{1}{I} \\ \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1} &= \widehat{\mathbf{x}_2} \frac{1}{I}\end{aligned}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.122)

Back substitution into the line element gives

\begin{aligned}d^1 \mathbf{x} = -du^2 \left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_2} \right\rvert \widehat{\mathbf{x}_2}+du^1 \left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_1} \right\rvert \widehat{\mathbf{x}_1}=-du^2 \left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_2} \right\rvert \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1} I-du^1 \left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_1} \right\rvert \widehat{\mathbf{x}^2} I.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.122)

Writing (no sum) $du^i \left\lvert {\mathbf{x}_i} \right\rvert = ds_i$, we have

\begin{aligned}d^1 \mathbf{x} I = -\left( { ds_2 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1} +ds_1 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^2} } \right) I^2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.122)

This provides us a divergence and normal relationship, with $-I^2$ terms on each side that can be canceled. Restoring explicit range evaluation, that is

\begin{aligned}\int_A dA \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f}=\int_{\Delta u^2} {\left.{{ ds_2 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1} \cdot \mathbf{f}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^1}}+ \int_{\Delta u^1} {\left.{{ ds_1 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^2} \cdot \mathbf{f}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^2}}=\int_{\Delta u^2} {\left.{{ ds_2 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1} \cdot \mathbf{f}}}\right\vert}_{{u^1(1)}}-\int_{\Delta u^2} {\left.{{ ds_2 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1} \cdot \mathbf{f}}}\right\vert}_{{u^1(0)}}+ \int_{\Delta u^1} {\left.{{ ds_1 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^2} \cdot \mathbf{f}}}\right\vert}_{{u^2(0)}}- \int_{\Delta u^1} {\left.{{ ds_1 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^2} \cdot \mathbf{f}}}\right\vert}_{{u^2(0)}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.122)

Let’s consider this graphically for an Euclidean metric as illustrated in fig. 1.9.

Fig 1.9. Normals on area element

We see that

1. along $u^2(0)$ the outwards normal is $-\widehat{\mathbf{x}^2}$,
2. along $u^2(1)$ the outwards normal is $\widehat{\mathbf{x}^2}$,
3. along $u^1(0)$ the outwards normal is $-\widehat{\mathbf{x}^1}$, and
4. along $u^1(1)$ the outwards normal is $\widehat{\mathbf{x}^2}$.

Writing that outwards normal as $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$, we have

\begin{aligned}\int_A dA \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f}= \mathop{\rlap{\ensuremath{\mkern3.5mu\circlearrowright}}\int} ds \hat{\mathbf{n}} \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.126)

Note that we can use the same algebraic notion of outward normal for non-Euclidean spaces, although cannot expect the geometry to look anything like that of the figure.

## Example: 3D divergence theorem

As with the 2D example, let’s start back with

\begin{aligned}\int_V \left\langle{{ d^3 \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f} }}\right\rangle = \int_{\partial V} \left( { d^2 \mathbf{x} I} \right) \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.127)

In a 3D space, the pseudoscalar commutes with all grades, so we have

\begin{aligned}\int_V \left\langle{{ d^3 \mathbf{x} \boldsymbol{\nabla} I \mathbf{f} }}\right\rangle=\int_V \left( { d^3 \mathbf{x} I } \right) \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f}=I^2 \int_V dV \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.128)

where $d^3 \mathbf{x} I = dV I^2$, and we have used a pseudoscalar with the same orientation as the volume element

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}I &= \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{123} } \\ \mathbf{x}_{123} &= \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.129)

In the boundary integral our dual two form is

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} I= du^1 du^2 \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2+du^3 du^1 \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1+du^2 du^3 \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3= \left( { dA_{3} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{12} } \frac{1}{I}+dA_{2} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{31} } \frac{1}{I}+dA_{1} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{23} } \frac{1}{I}} \right) I^2,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.129)

where $\mathbf{x}_{ij} = \mathbf{x}_i \wedge \mathbf{x}_j$, and

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}dA_1 &= \left\lvert {d\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_3} \right\rvert \\ dA_2 &= \left\lvert {d\mathbf{x}_3 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_1} \right\rvert \\ dA_3 &= \left\lvert {d\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge d\mathbf{x}_2} \right\rvert.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.131)

Observe that we can do a cyclic permutation of a 3 blade without any change of sign, for example

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 =-\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 =\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.132)

Because of this we can write the dual two form as we expressed the normals in lemma 7

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} I = \left( { dA_1 \widehat{\mathbf{x}_{23}} \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{123}}}} + dA_2 \widehat{\mathbf{x}_{31}} \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{231}}}} + dA_3 \widehat{\mathbf{x}_{12}} \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{312}}}}} \right) I^2=\left( { dA_1 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^1}+dA_2 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^2}+dA_3 \widehat{\mathbf{x}^3} } \right) I^2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.132)

We can now state the 3D divergence theorem, canceling out the metric and orientation dependent term $I^2$ on both sides

\begin{aligned}\int_V dV \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f}=\int dA \hat{\mathbf{n}} \cdot \mathbf{f},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.134)

where (sums implied)

\begin{aligned}dA \hat{\mathbf{n}} = dA_i \widehat{\mathbf{x}^i},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.135)

and

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}{\left.{{\hat{\mathbf{n}}}}\right\vert}_{{u^i = u^i(1)}} &= \widehat{\mathbf{x}^i} \\ {\left.{{\hat{\mathbf{n}}}}\right\vert}_{{u^i = u^i(0)}} &= -\widehat{\mathbf{x}^i}\end{aligned}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.136)

The outwards normals at the upper integration ranges of a three parameter surface are depicted in fig. 1.10.

Fig 1.10. Outwards normals on volume at upper integration ranges.

This sign alternation originates with the two form elements $\left( {d\mathbf{x}_i \wedge d\mathbf{x}_j} \right) \cdot F$ from the Stokes boundary integral, which were explicitly evaluated at the endpoints of the integral. That is, for $k \ne i,j$,

\begin{aligned}\int_{\partial V} \left( { d\mathbf{x}_i \wedge d\mathbf{x}_j } \right) \cdot F\equiv\int_{\Delta u^i} \int_{\Delta u^j} {\left.{{\left( { \left( { d\mathbf{x}_i \wedge d\mathbf{x}_j } \right) \cdot F } \right)}}\right\vert}_{{u^k = u^k(1)}}-{\left.{{\left( { \left( { d\mathbf{x}_i \wedge d\mathbf{x}_j } \right) \cdot F } \right)}}\right\vert}_{{u^k = u^k(0)}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.137)

In the context of the divergence theorem, this means that we are implicitly requiring the dot products $\widehat{\mathbf{x}^k} \cdot \mathbf{f}$ to be evaluated specifically at the end points of the integration where $u^k = u^k(1), u^k = u^k(0)$, accounting for the alternation of sign required to describe the normals as uniformly outwards.

## Example: 4D divergence theorem

Applying Stokes theorem to a trivector $T = I \mathbf{f}$ in the 4D case we find

\begin{aligned}-I^2 \int_V d^4 x \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f} = \int_{\partial V} \left( { d^3 \mathbf{x} I} \right) \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.138)

Here the pseudoscalar has been picked to have the same orientation as the hypervolume element $d^4 \mathbf{x} = I d^4 x$. Writing $\mathbf{x}_{ij \cdots k} = \mathbf{x}_i \wedge \mathbf{x}_j \wedge \cdots \mathbf{x}_k$ the dual of the three form is

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} I &= \left( { du^1 du^2 du^3 \mathbf{x}_{123}-du^1 du^2 du^4 \mathbf{x}_{124}+du^1 du^3 du^4 \mathbf{x}_{134}-du^2 du^3 du^4 \mathbf{x}_{234}} \right) I \\ &= \left( { dA^{123} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{123} } -dA^{124} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{124} } +dA^{134} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{134} } -dA^{234} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{234} }} \right) I \\ &= \left( { dA^{123} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{123} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{1234} }}} -dA^{124} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{124} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{1234} }}} +dA^{134} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{134} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{1234} }}} -dA^{234} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{234} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{1234} }}}} \right) I^2 \\ &= -\left( { dA^{123} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{123} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{4123} }}} +dA^{124} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{124} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{3412} }}} +dA^{134} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{134} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{2341} }}} +dA^{234} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{234} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{1234} }}}} \right) I^2 \\ &= -\left( { dA^{123} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{123} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{4123} }}} +dA^{124} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{412} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{3412} }}} +dA^{134} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{341} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{2341} }}} +dA^{234} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}_{234} } \frac{1}{{\widehat{\mathbf{x}_{1234} }}}} \right) I^2 \\ &= -\left( { dA^{123} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}^{4} } +dA^{124} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}^{3} } +dA^{134} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}^{2} } +dA^{234} \widehat{ \mathbf{x}^{1} } } \right) I^2\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.139)

Here, we’ve written

\begin{aligned}dA^{ijk} = \left\lvert { d\mathbf{x}_i \wedge d\mathbf{x}_j \wedge d\mathbf{x}_k } \right\rvert.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.140)

Observe that the dual representation nicely removes the alternation of sign that we had in the Stokes theorem boundary integral, since each alternation of the wedged vectors in the pseudoscalar changes the sign once.

As before, we define the outwards normals as $\hat{\mathbf{n}} = \pm \widehat{\mathbf{x}^i}$ on the upper and lower integration ranges respectively. The scalar area elements on these faces can be written in a dual form

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned} dA_4 &= dA^{123} \\ dA_3 &= dA^{124} \\ dA_2 &= dA^{134} \\ dA_1 &= dA^{234} \end{aligned},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.141)

so that the 4D divergence theorem looks just like the 2D and 3D cases

\begin{aligned}\int_V d^4 x \boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot \mathbf{f} = \int_{\partial V} d^3 x \hat{\mathbf{n}} \cdot \mathbf{f}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.142)

Here we define the volume scaled normal as

\begin{aligned}d^3 x \hat{\mathbf{n}} = dA_i \widehat{\mathbf{x}^i}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.143)

As before, we have made use of the implicit fact that the three form (and it’s dot product with $\mathbf{f}$) was evaluated on the boundaries of the integration region, with a toggling of sign on the lower limit of that evaluation that is now reflected in what we have defined as the outwards normal.

We also obtain explicit instructions from this formalism how to compute the “outwards” normal for this surface in a 4D space (unit scaling of the dual basis elements), something that we cannot compute using any sort of geometrical intuition. For free we’ve obtained a result that applies to both Euclidean and Minkowski (or other non-Euclidean) spaces.

# Volume integral coordinate representations

It may be useful to formulate the curl integrals in tensor form. For vectors $\mathbf{f}$, and bivectors $B$, the coordinate representations of those differential forms (\cref{pr:stokesTheoremGeometricAlgebraII:1}) are

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=- d^2 u \epsilon^{ a b } \partial_a f_b\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.144a)

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=-d^3 u \epsilon^{a b c} \mathbf{x}_a \partial_b f_{c}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.144b)

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=-\frac{1}{2} d^4 u \epsilon^{a b c d} \mathbf{x}_a \wedge \mathbf{x}_b \partial_{c} f_{d}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.144c)

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right)=-\frac{1}{2}d^3 u \epsilon^{a b c} \partial_a B_{b c}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.144d)

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right)=-\frac{1}{2} d^4 u \epsilon^{a b c d} \mathbf{x}_a \partial_b B_{cd}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.144e)

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge T } \right)=-d^4 u\left( {\partial_4 T_{123}-\partial_3 T_{124}+\partial_2 T_{134}-\partial_1 T_{234}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.144f)

Here the bivector $B$ and trivector $T$ is expressed in terms of their curvilinear components on the tangent space

\begin{aligned}B = \frac{1}{2} \mathbf{x}^i \wedge \mathbf{x}^j B_{ij} + B_\perp\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.145a)

\begin{aligned}T = \frac{1}{{3!}} \mathbf{x}^i \wedge \mathbf{x}^j \wedge \mathbf{x}^k T_{ijk} + T_\perp,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.145b)

where

\begin{aligned}B_{ij} = \mathbf{x}_j \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_i \cdot B } \right) = -B_{ji}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.146a)

\begin{aligned}T_{ijk} = \mathbf{x}_k \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_j \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_i \cdot B } \right)} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.146b)

For the trivector components are also antisymmetric, changing sign with any interchange of indices.

Note that eq. 1.0.144d and eq. 1.0.144f appear much different on the surface, but both have the same structure. This can be seen by writing for former as

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right)=-d^3 u\left( { \partial_1 B_{2 3} + \partial_2 B_{3 1} + \partial_3 B_{1 2}} \right)=-d^3 u\left( { \partial_3 B_{1 2} - \partial_2 B_{1 3} + \partial_1 B_{2 3}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.146b)

In both of these we have an alternation of sign, where the tensor index skips one of the volume element indices is sequence. We’ve seen in the 4D divergence theorem that this alternation of sign can be related to a duality transformation.

In integral form (no sum over indexes $i$ in $du^i$ terms), these are

\begin{aligned}\int d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=- \epsilon^{ a b } \int {\left.{{du^b f_b}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^a}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.148a)

\begin{aligned}\int d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=-\epsilon^{a b c} \int du^a du^c{\left.{{\mathbf{x}_a f_{c}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^b}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.148b)

\begin{aligned}\int d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)=-\frac{1}{2} \epsilon^{a b c d} \int du^a du^b du^d{\left.{{\mathbf{x}_a \wedge \mathbf{x}_b f_{d}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^c}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.148c)

\begin{aligned}\int d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right)=-\frac{1}{2}\epsilon^{a b c} \int du^b du^c{\left.{{B_{b c}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^a}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.148d)

\begin{aligned}\int d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right)=-\frac{1}{2} \epsilon^{a b c d} \int du^a du^c du^d{\left.{{\mathbf{x}_a B_{cd}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^b}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.148e)

\begin{aligned}\int d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge T } \right)=-\int \left( {du^1 du^2 du^3 {\left.{{T_{123}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^4}}-du^1 du^2 du^4 {\left.{{T_{124}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^3}}+du^1 du^3 du^4 {\left.{{T_{134}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^2}}-du^2 du^3 du^4 {\left.{{T_{234}}}\right\vert}_{{\Delta u^1}}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.148f)

Of these, I suspect that only eq. 1.0.148a and eq. 1.0.148d are of use.

# Final remarks

Because we have used curvilinear coordinates from the get go, we have arrived naturally at a formulation that works for both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, and have demonstrated that Stokes (and the divergence theorem) holds regardless of the geometry or the parameterization. We also know explicitly how to formulate both theorems for any parameterization that we choose, something much more valuable than knowledge that this is possible.

For the divergence theorem we have introduced the concept of outwards normal (for example in 3D, eq. 1.0.136), which still holds for non-Euclidean geometries. We may not be able to form intuitive geometrical interpretations for these normals, but do have an algebraic description of them.

# Appendix

## Question: Expand volume elements in coordinates

Show that the coordinate representation for the volume element dotted with the curl can be represented as a sum of antisymmetric terms. That is

• (a)Prove eq. 1.0.144a
• (b)Prove eq. 1.0.144b
• (c)Prove eq. 1.0.144c
• (d)Prove eq. 1.0.144d
• (e)Prove eq. 1.0.144e
• (f)Prove eq. 1.0.144f

### (a) Two parameter volume, curl of vector

\begin{aligned}d^2 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} \right) &= d^2 u\Bigl( { \left( \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \Bigr) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= d^2 u \left( \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}-\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \right) \\ &= d^2 u\left( \partial_2 f_1-\partial_1 f_2 \right) \\ &= - d^2 u \epsilon^{ab} \partial_{a} f_{b}. \qquad\square\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.149)

### (b) Three parameter volume, curl of vector

\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right) &= d^3 u\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \Bigr) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &= d^3 u\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}} \Bigr) \\ &= d^3 u\Bigl( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 -\mathbf{x}_2 \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 } \right)+\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 -\mathbf{x}_1 \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 -\mathbf{x}_3 \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &= d^3 u\Bigl( {\mathbf{x}_1 \left( { -\partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 + \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_2 \left( { -\partial_3 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 + \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_3 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_3 \left( { -\partial_1 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_2 + \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \cdot \mathbf{x}_1 } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &= d^3 u\Bigl( {\mathbf{x}_1 \left( { -\partial_2 f_3 + \partial_3 f_2 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_2 \left( { -\partial_3 f_1 + \partial_1 f_3 } \right)+\mathbf{x}_3 \left( { -\partial_1 f_2 + \partial_2 f_1 } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &= - d^3 u \epsilon^{abc} \partial_b f_c. \qquad\square\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.150)

### (c) Four parameter volume, curl of vector

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge \mathbf{f} } \right)&=d^4 u\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \Bigr) \cdot \partial_i \mathbf{f} \\ &=d^4 u\Bigl( {\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_4 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}} \Bigr) \\ &=d^4 u\Bigl( { \\ &\quad\quad \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_4 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_4 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_4 \mathbf{f} \\ &\quad-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_3 \mathbf{f} \\ &\quad+ \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_2 \mathbf{f} \\ &\quad-\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f}-\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 } \right) \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_1 \mathbf{f} \\ &\qquad} \Bigr) \\ &=d^4 u\Bigl( {\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \partial_{[4} f_{3]}+\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \partial_{[2} f_{4]}+\mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 \partial_{[3} f_{2]}+\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 \partial_{[4} f_{1]}+\mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 \partial_{[1} f_{3]}+\mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_4 \partial_{[2} f_{1]}} \Bigr) \\ &=- \frac{1}{2} d^4 u \epsilon^{abcd} \mathbf{x}_a \wedge \mathbf{x}_b \partial_{c} f_{d}. \qquad\square\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.151)

### (d) Three parameter volume, curl of bivector

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}d^3 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B } \right)&=d^3 u\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \mathbf{x}^i } \Bigr) \cdot \partial_i B \\ &=d^3 u\Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \wedge \mathbf{x}_2 } \right) \cdot \partial_3 B+\left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \wedge \mathbf{x}_1 } \right) \cdot \partial_2 B+\left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \wedge \mathbf{x}_3 } \right) \cdot \partial_1 B} \Bigr) \\ &=\frac{1}{2} d^3 u\Bigl( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_3 B } \right) -\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_3 B } \right) \\ &\qquad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_2 B } \right) -\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_2 B } \right) \\ &\qquad +\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_1 B } \right) -\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_1 B } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &=\frac{1}{2} d^3 u\Bigl( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_3 B - \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_2 B } \right) \\ &\qquad +\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_1 B - \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_3 B } \right) \\ &\qquad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_2 B - \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_1 B } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &=\frac{1}{2} d^3 u\Bigl( {\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot B} \right) - \partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot B} \right) } \right) \\ &\qquad +\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot B} \right) - \partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot B} \right) } \right) \\ &\qquad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot B} \right) - \partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot B} \right) } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &=\frac{1}{2} d^3 u\Bigl( {\partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot B} \right) } \right) - \partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot B} \right) } \right) \\ &\qquad+ \partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot B} \right) } \right) - \partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot B} \right) } \right) \\ &\qquad+ \partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot B} \right) } \right) - \partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot B} \right) } \right)} \Bigr) \\ &=\frac{1}{2} d^3 u\Bigl( {\partial_2 B_{13} - \partial_3 B_{12}+\partial_3 B_{21} - \partial_1 B_{23}+\partial_1 B_{32} - \partial_2 B_{31}} \Bigr) \\ &=d^3 u\Bigl( {\partial_2 B_{13}+\partial_3 B_{21}+\partial_1 B_{32}} \Bigr) \\ &= - \frac{1}{2} d^3 u \epsilon^{abc} \partial_a B_{bc}. \qquad\square\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.152)

### (e) Four parameter volume, curl of bivector

To start, we require lemma 3. For convenience lets also write our wedge products as a single indexed quantity, as in $\mathbf{x}_{abc}$ for $\mathbf{x}_a \wedge \mathbf{x}_b \wedge \mathbf{x}_c$. The expansion is

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge B \right) &= d^4 u \left( \mathbf{x}_{1234} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i \right) \cdot \partial_i B \\ &= d^4 u\left( \mathbf{x}_{123} \cdot \partial_4 B - \mathbf{x}_{124} \cdot \partial_3 B + \mathbf{x}_{134} \cdot \partial_2 B - \mathbf{x}_{234} \cdot \partial_1 B \right) \\ &= d^4 u \Bigl( \mathbf{x}_1 \left( \mathbf{x}_{23} \cdot \partial_4 B \right) + \mathbf{x}_2 \left( \mathbf{x}_{32} \cdot \partial_4 B \right) + \mathbf{x}_3 \left( \mathbf{x}_{12} \cdot \partial_4 B \right) \\ &\qquad - \mathbf{x}_1 \left( \mathbf{x}_{24} \cdot \partial_3 B \right) - \mathbf{x}_2 \left( \mathbf{x}_{41} \cdot \partial_3 B \right) - \mathbf{x}_4 \left( \mathbf{x}_{12} \cdot \partial_3 B \right) \\ &\qquad + \mathbf{x}_1 \left( \mathbf{x}_{34} \cdot \partial_2 B \right) + \mathbf{x}_3 \left( \mathbf{x}_{41} \cdot \partial_2 B \right) + \mathbf{x}_4 \left( \mathbf{x}_{13} \cdot \partial_2 B \right) \\ &\qquad - \mathbf{x}_2 \left( \mathbf{x}_{34} \cdot \partial_1 B \right) - \mathbf{x}_3 \left( \mathbf{x}_{42} \cdot \partial_1 B \right) - \mathbf{x}_4 \left( \mathbf{x}_{23} \cdot \partial_1 B \right)} \Bigr) \\ &= d^4 u \Bigl( \mathbf{x}_1 \left( \mathbf{x}_{23} \cdot \partial_4 B + \mathbf{x}_{42} \cdot \partial_3 B + \mathbf{x}_{34} \cdot \partial_2 B \right) \\ &\qquad + \mathbf{x}_2 \left( \mathbf{x}_{32} \cdot \partial_4 B + \mathbf{x}_{14} \cdot \partial_3 B + \mathbf{x}_{43} \cdot \partial_1 B \right) \\ &\qquad + \mathbf{x}_3 \left( \mathbf{x}_{12} \cdot \partial_4 B + \mathbf{x}_{41} \cdot \partial_2 B + \mathbf{x}_{24} \cdot \partial_1 B \right) \\ &\qquad + \mathbf{x}_4 \left( \mathbf{x}_{21} \cdot \partial_3 B + \mathbf{x}_{13} \cdot \partial_2 B + \mathbf{x}_{32} \cdot \partial_1 B \right)} \Bigr) \\ &= - \frac{1}{2} d^4 u \epsilon^{a b c d} \mathbf{x}_a \partial_b B_{c d}. \qquad\square\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.153)

This last step uses an intermediate result from the eq. 1.0.152 expansion above, since each of the four terms has the same structure we have previously observed.

### (f) Four parameter volume, curl of trivector

Using the $\mathbf{x}_{ijk}$ shorthand again, the initial expansion gives

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge T } \right)=d^4 u\left( {\mathbf{x}_{123} \cdot \partial_4 T - \mathbf{x}_{124} \cdot \partial_3 T + \mathbf{x}_{134} \cdot \partial_2 T - \mathbf{x}_{234} \cdot \partial_1 T} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.153)

Applying lemma 4 to expand the inner products within the braces we have

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_{123} \cdot \partial_4 T-&\mathbf{x}_{124} \cdot \partial_3 T+\mathbf{x}_{134} \cdot \partial_2 T-\mathbf{x}_{234} \cdot \partial_1 T \\ &=\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_4 T } \right) } \right)-\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_3 T } \right) } \right) \\ &\quad +\underbrace{\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_2 T } \right) } \right)-\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_1 T } \right) } \right)}_{\text{Apply cyclic permutations}}\\ &=\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_4 T } \right) } \right)-\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_3 T } \right) } \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_2 T } \right) } \right)-\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_1 T } \right) } \right) \\ &=\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot\left( {\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_4 T-\mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_3 T} \right) } \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( {\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_2 T-\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_1 T} \right) } \right) \\ &=\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot\left( {\partial_4 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right)-\partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right)} \right) } \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( {\partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right)-\partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right)} \right) } \right) \\ &=\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_4 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right) } \right)+\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right) } \right)+\mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &-\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \left( { \partial_4 \mathbf{x}_2} \right) \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right) } \right)-\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \left( { \partial_3 \mathbf{x}_1} \right) \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &\quad -\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \left( { \partial_2 \mathbf{x}_4} \right) \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right) } \right)-\mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \left( { \partial_1 \mathbf{x}_3} \right) \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &=\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \partial_4 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right) } \right)+\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right) } \right)+\mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &+\frac{\partial^2 \mathbf{x}}{\partial u^4 \partial u^2}\cdot\not{{\left( {\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right)+\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right)} \right)}} \\ &\quad +\frac{\partial^2 \mathbf{x}}{\partial u^1 \partial u^3}\cdot\not{{\left( {\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right)+\mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right)} \right)}}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.155)

We can cancel those last terms using lemma 5. Using the same reverse chain rule expansion once more we have

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_{123} \cdot \partial_4 T-&\mathbf{x}_{124} \cdot \partial_3 T+\mathbf{x}_{134} \cdot \partial_2 T-\mathbf{x}_{234} \cdot \partial_1 T \\ &=\partial_4 \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right) } \right) } \right)+\partial_3 \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right) } \right) } \right)+\partial_2 \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right) } \right) } \right)+\partial_1 \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right) } \right) } \right) \\ &-\left( { \partial_4 \mathbf{x}_1} \right)\cdot\not{{\left( {\mathbf{x}_2 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_3 \cdot T } \right)+\mathbf{x}_3 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_2 \cdot T } \right)} \right)}}-\left( { \partial_3 \mathbf{x}_2} \right) \cdot\not{{\left( {\mathbf{x}_1 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_4 \cdot T } \right)\mathbf{x}_4 \cdot \left( { \mathbf{x}_1 \cdot T } \right)} \right)}},\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.156)

or

\begin{aligned}d^4 \mathbf{x} \cdot \left( { \boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge T } \right)=d^4 u\Bigl( {\partial_4 T_{3 2 1}+\partial_3 T_{4 1 2}+\partial_2 T_{1 4 3}+\partial_1 T_{2 3 4}} \Bigr).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.156)

The final result follows after permuting the indices slightly.

### Lemma 1. Distribution of inner products

Given two blades $A_s, B_r$ with grades subject to $s > r > 0$, and a vector $b$, the inner product distributes according to

\begin{aligned}A_s \cdot \left( { b \wedge B_r } \right) = \left( { A_s \cdot b } \right) \cdot B_r.\end{aligned}

This will allow us, for example, to expand a general inner product of the form $d^k \mathbf{x} \cdot (\boldsymbol{\partial} \wedge F)$.

The proof is straightforward, but also mechanical. Start by expanding the wedge and dot products within a grade selection operator

\begin{aligned}A_s \cdot \left( { b \wedge B_r } \right)={\left\langle{{A_s (b \wedge B_r)}}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}=\frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{A_s \left( {b B_r + (-1)^{r} B_r b} \right) }}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.158)

Solving for $B_r b$ in

\begin{aligned}2 b \cdot B_r = b B_r - (-1)^{r} B_r b,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.159)

we have

\begin{aligned}A_s \cdot \left( { b \wedge B_r } \right)=\frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ A_s b B_r + A_s \left( { b B_r - 2 b \cdot B_r } \right) }}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}={\left\langle{{ A_s b B_r }}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}-\not{{{\left\langle{{ A_s \left( { b \cdot B_r } \right) }}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.160)

The last term above is zero since we are selecting the $s - r - 1$ grade element of a multivector with grades $s - r + 1$ and $s + r - 1$, which has no terms for $r > 0$. Now we can expand the $A_s b$ multivector product, for

\begin{aligned}A_s \cdot \left( { b \wedge B_r } \right)={\left\langle{{ \left( { A_s \cdot b + A_s \wedge b} \right) B_r }}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.161)

The latter multivector (with the wedge product factor) above has grades $s + 1 - r$ and $s + 1 + r$, so this selection operator finds nothing. This leaves

\begin{aligned}A_s \cdot \left( { b \wedge B_r } \right)={\left\langle{{\left( { A_s \cdot b } \right) \cdot B_r+ \left( { A_s \cdot b } \right) \wedge B_r}}\right\rangle}_{{s - (r + 1)}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.162)

The first dot products term has grade $s - 1 - r$ and is selected, whereas the wedge term has grade $s - 1 + r \ne s - r - 1$ (for $r > 0$). $\qquad\square$

### Lemma 2. Distribution of two bivectors

For vectors $\mathbf{a}$, $\mathbf{b}$, and bivector $B$, we have

\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right) \cdot B = \frac{1}{2} \left( {\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot B } \right)-\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot B } \right)} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.163)

Proof follows by applying the scalar selection operator, expanding the wedge product within it, and eliminating any of the terms that cannot contribute grade zero values

\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right) \cdot B &= \left\langle{{\frac{1}{2} \Bigl( { \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} - \mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} } \Bigr) B}}\right\rangle \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\left\langle{{\mathbf{a} \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot B + \not{{ \mathbf{b} \wedge B }} } \right)-\mathbf{b} \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot B + \not{{ \mathbf{a} \wedge B }} } \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\left\langle{{\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot B } \right)+\not{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot B } \right)}}-\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot B } \right)-\not{{\mathbf{b} \wedge \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot B } \right)}}}}\right\rangle \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\Bigl( {\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot B } \right)-\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot B } \right)} \Bigr)\qquad\square\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.163)

### Lemma 3. Inner product of trivector with bivector

Given a bivector $B$, and trivector $\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}$ where $\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}$ and $\mathbf{c}$ are vectors, the inner product is

\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} } \right) \cdot B=\mathbf{a} \Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} } \right) \cdot B } \Bigr)+\mathbf{b} \Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{c} \wedge \mathbf{a} } \right) \cdot B } \Bigr)+\mathbf{c} \Bigl( { \left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right) \cdot B } \Bigr).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.165)

This is also problem 1.1(c) from Exercises 2.1 in [3], and submits to a dumb expansion in successive dot products with a final regrouping. With $B = \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{v}$

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right)\cdot B&={\left\langle{{\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right) \left( \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{v} \right) }}\right\rangle}_{1} \\ &={\left\langle{{\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right)\left(\mathbf{u} \mathbf{v}- \mathbf{u} \cdot \mathbf{v}\right) }}\right\rangle}_{1} \\ &=\left(\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right) \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \cdot \mathbf{v} \\ &=\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \right) \cdot \mathbf{v} \left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right)+\left( \mathbf{c} \wedge \mathbf{a} \right) \cdot \mathbf{v} \left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right)+\left( \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right) \cdot \mathbf{v} \left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \\ &=\mathbf{a}\left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right)\left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right)-\mathbf{b}\left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right)\left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{c}\left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right)\left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right)-\mathbf{a}\left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right)\left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \\ &\quad +\mathbf{b}\left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right)\left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right)-\mathbf{c}\left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right)\left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \\ &=\mathbf{a}\left( \left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right) \left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) - \left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right) \left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \right)\\ &\quad +\mathbf{b}\left( \left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right) \left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) - \left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right) \left( \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \right)\\ &\quad +\mathbf{c}\left( \left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right) \left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) - \left( \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{v} \right) \left( \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{u} \right) \right) \\ &=\mathbf{a}\left( \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right)\cdot\left( \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{v} \right)\\ &\quad +\mathbf{b}\left( \mathbf{c} \wedge \mathbf{a} \right)\cdot\left( \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{v} \right)\\ &\quad +\mathbf{c}\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \right) \cdot\left( \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{v} \right)\\ &=\mathbf{a}\left( \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \right)\cdot B+\mathbf{b}\left( \mathbf{c} \wedge \mathbf{a} \right) \cdot B+\mathbf{c}\left( \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \right)\cdot B. \qquad\square\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.166)

### Lemma 4. Distribution of two trivectors

Given a trivector $T$ and three vectors $\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}$, and $\mathbf{c}$, the entire inner product can be expanded in terms of any successive set inner products, subject to change of sign with interchange of any two adjacent vectors within the dot product sequence

\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} } \right) \cdot T &= \mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{c} \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &= -\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{c} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &= \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{c} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &= - \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{c} \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &= \mathbf{c} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot T } \right) } \right) \\ &= - \mathbf{c} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T } \right) } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.167)

To show this, we first expand within a scalar selection operator

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} } \right) \cdot T&=\left\langle{{\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} } \right) T}}\right\rangle \\ &=\frac{1}{6}\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c} T- \mathbf{a} \mathbf{c} \mathbf{b} T+ \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c} \mathbf{a} T- \mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} T+ \mathbf{c} \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} T- \mathbf{c} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} T}}\right\rangle \\ \end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.168)

Now consider any single term from the scalar selection, such as the first. This can be reordered using the vector dot product identity

\begin{aligned}\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c} T}}\right\rangle=\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \left( { -\mathbf{c} \mathbf{b} + 2 \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{c} } \right) T}}\right\rangle=-\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \mathbf{c} \mathbf{b} T}}\right\rangle+2 \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{c} \not{{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} T}}\right\rangle}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.168)

The vector-trivector product in the latter grade selection operation above contributes only bivector and quadvector terms, thus contributing nothing. This can be repeated, showing that

\begin{aligned} \left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c} T }}\right\rangle &= - \left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \mathbf{c} \mathbf{b} T }}\right\rangle \\ &= + \left\langle{{ \mathbf{b} \mathbf{c} \mathbf{a} T }}\right\rangle \\ &= - \left\langle{{ \mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} \mathbf{c} T }}\right\rangle \\ &= + \left\langle{{ \mathbf{c} \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} T }}\right\rangle \\ &= - \left\langle{{ \mathbf{c} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} T }}\right\rangle.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.168)

Substituting this back into eq. 1.0.168 proves lemma 4.

### Lemma 5. Permutation of two successive dot products with trivector

Given a trivector $T$ and two vectors $\mathbf{a}$ and $\mathbf{b}$, alternating the order of the dot products changes the sign

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot T } \right)=-\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T } \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.171)

This and lemma 4 are clearly examples of a more general identity, but I’ll not try to prove that here. To show this one, we have

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot T } \right) &= {\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot T } \right) }}\right\rangle}_{1} \\ &= \frac{1}{2}{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} T + \mathbf{a} T \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{1} \\ &= \frac{1}{2}{\left\langle{{ \left( { -\mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} + \not{{2 \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b}}}} \right) T + \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T} \right) \mathbf{b} + \not{{ \mathbf{a} \wedge T}} \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{1} \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\left( {-\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T } \right)+\left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T } \right) \cdot \mathbf{b}} \right) \\ &= -\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot T } \right). \qquad\square\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.172)

Cancellation of terms above was because they could not contribute to a grade one selection. We also employed the relation $\mathbf{x} \cdot B = - B \cdot \mathbf{x}$ for bivector $B$ and vector $\mathbf{x}$.

### Lemma 6. Duality in a plane

For a vector $\mathbf{a}$, and a plane containing $\mathbf{a}$ and $\mathbf{b}$, the dual $\mathbf{a}^{*}$ of this vector with respect to this plane is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} = \frac{\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right)}{\left( {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right)^2},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.173)

Satisfying

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} \cdot \mathbf{a} = 1,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.174)

and

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} \cdot \mathbf{b} = 0.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.175)

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right)=\left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{a} } \right) \mathbf{b}-\mathbf{b}^2 \mathbf{a}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.176)

Dotting with $\mathbf{a}$ we have

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right) } \right)=\mathbf{a} \cdot \left( {\left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{a} } \right) \mathbf{b}-\mathbf{b}^2 \mathbf{a}} \right)=\left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{a} } \right)^2 - \mathbf{b}^2 \mathbf{a}^2,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.177)

but dotting with $\mathbf{b}$ yields zero

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right) } \right) &= \mathbf{b} \cdot \left( {\left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{a} } \right) \mathbf{b}-\mathbf{b}^2 \mathbf{a}} \right) \\ &= \left( { \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{a} } \right) \mathbf{b}^2 - \mathbf{b}^2 \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right) \\ &= 0.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.178)

To complete the proof, we note that the product in eq. 1.177 is just the wedge squared

\begin{aligned}\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right)^2 &= \left\langle{{\left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right)^2}}\right\rangle \\ &= \left\langle{{\left( { \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} - \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right)\left( { \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} - \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right)}}\right\rangle \\ &= \left\langle{{\mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} - 2 \left( {\mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b}} \right) \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b}}}\right\rangle+\left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right)^2 \\ &= \left\langle{{\mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} \left( { -\mathbf{b} \mathbf{a} + 2 \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right)}}\right\rangle-\left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right)^2 \\ &= \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b} } \right)^2-\mathbf{a}^2 \mathbf{b}^2.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.179)

This duality relation can be recast with a linear denominator

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} &= \frac{\mathbf{b} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right)}{\left( {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right)^2} \\ &= \mathbf{b} \frac{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} }{\left( {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right)^2} \\ &= \mathbf{b} \frac{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} }{\left\lvert {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} } \right\rvert} \frac{\left\lvert {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right\rvert}{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} }\frac{1}{{\left( {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right)}},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.180)

or

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} = \mathbf{b} \frac{1}{{\left( {\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}} \right)}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.181)

We can use this form after scaling it appropriately to express duality in terms of the pseudoscalar.

### Lemma 7. Dual vector in a three vector subspace

In the subspace spanned by $\left\{ {\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}, \mathbf{c}} \right\}$, the dual of $\mathbf{a}$ is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a}^{*} = \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}}},\end{aligned}

Consider the dot product of $\hat{\mathbf{a}}^{*}$ with $\mathbf{u} \in \left\{ {\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}, \mathbf{c}} \right\}$.

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{u} \cdot \mathbf{a}^{*} &= \left\langle{{ \mathbf{u} \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}}} }}\right\rangle \\ &= \left\langle{{ \mathbf{u} \cdot \left( { \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}} \right) \frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}}} }}\right\rangle+\left\langle{{ \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}}} }}\right\rangle \\ &= \not{{\left\langle{{ \left( { \left( { \mathbf{u} \cdot \mathbf{b}} \right) \mathbf{c}-\left( {\mathbf{u} \cdot \mathbf{c}} \right) \mathbf{b}} \right)\frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}}} }}\right\rangle}}+\left\langle{{ \mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c} \frac{1}{{\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b} \wedge \mathbf{c}}} }}\right\rangle.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.182)

The canceled term is eliminated since it is the product of a vector and trivector producing no scalar term. Substituting $\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}, \mathbf{c}$, and noting that $\mathbf{u} \wedge \mathbf{u} = 0$, we have

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{a}^{*} &= 1 \\ \mathbf{b} \cdot \mathbf{a}^{*} &= 0 \\ \mathbf{c} \cdot \mathbf{a}^{*} &= 0.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.183)

### Lemma 8. Pseudoscalar selection

For grade $k$ blade $K \in \bigwedge^k$ (i.e. a pseudoscalar), and vectors $\mathbf{a}, \mathbf{b}$, the grade $k$ selection of this blade sandwiched between the vectors is

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} = (-1)^{k+1} {\left\langle{{K a b}}\right\rangle}_{k} = (-1)^{k+1} K \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b}} \right).\end{aligned}

To show this, we have to consider even and odd grades separately. First for even $k$ we have

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} &= {\left\langle{{ \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot K + \not{{\mathbf{a} \wedge K}}} \right) \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} \\ &= \frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ \left( { \mathbf{a} K - K \mathbf{a} } \right) \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} \\ &= \frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k}-\frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ K \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.184)

or

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} = -{\left\langle{{ K \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} = -K \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.185)

Similarly for odd $k$, we have

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} &= {\left\langle{{ \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot K + \not{{\mathbf{a} \wedge K}}} \right) \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} \\ &= \frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ \left( { \mathbf{a} K + K \mathbf{a} } \right) \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} \\ &= \frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k}+\frac{1}{2} {\left\langle{{ K \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.186)

or

\begin{aligned}{\left\langle{{ \mathbf{a} K \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} = {\left\langle{{ K \mathbf{a} \mathbf{b} }}\right\rangle}_{k} = K \left( { \mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.187)

Adjusting for the signs completes the proof.

# References

[1] John Denker. Magnetic field for a straight wire., 2014. URL http://www.av8n.com/physics/straight-wire.pdf. [Online; accessed 11-May-2014].

[2] H. Flanders. Differential Forms With Applications to the Physical Sciences. Courier Dover Publications, 1989.

[3] D. Hestenes. New Foundations for Classical Mechanics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.

[4] Peeter Joot. Collection of old notes on Stokes theorem in Geometric algebra, 2014. URL https://sites.google.com/site/peeterjoot3/math2014/bigCollectionOfPartiallyIncorrectStokesTheoremMusings.pdf.

[5] Peeter Joot. Synposis of old notes on Stokes theorem in Geometric algebra, 2014. URL https://sites.google.com/site/peeterjoot3/math2014/synopsisOfBigCollectionOfPartiallyIncorrectStokesTheoremMusings.pdf.

[6] A. Macdonald. Vector and Geometric Calculus. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.

[7] M. Schwartz. Principles of Electrodynamics. Dover Publications, 1987.

[8] Michael Spivak. Calculus on manifolds, volume 1. Benjamin New York, 1965.

## Found code that fails grade 11 math: log base conversion.

Posted by peeterjoot on March 26, 2014

Unless my headache is impacting my ability to manipulate log identities, this LOG10 code is plain wrong:

      static double findLog(double value, FunctionType logFunction)
{
switch (logFunction)
{
case LN:
return log(double(value));
case LOG10:
return log(double(value)) / log(2.0);
...
}

Perhaps it is dead code, since this divide should be log(10.0) (or just M_LN10), but nobody appears to have noticed.

Two other possibilities are:

• somebody was being way too clever, and when they wrote LOG10, they meant it as Log base 0b10.
• somebody thought that for computer software a “natural logarithm” would use base 2.

Posted in C/C++ development and debugging. | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Posted by peeterjoot on March 12, 2014

This was a favorite of my dad, Jaan Joot.  I’m pretty sure that it is actually Vanaema’s recipe.

2 herring

2 small cans beets

6 potatoes (large)

4-5 pickles

1 onion

1 apple

3 (¼”) slides ham or 5” kolbassa

2 hard boiled eggs

1 tablespoon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

sour cream and mayo (small bowl)

– add above just before serving

Posted in reciepes | 1 Comment »

## Curvilinear coordinates and reciprocal basis

Posted by peeterjoot on March 9, 2014

# Motivation

Here I’d like to explore some ideas from [1] where curvilinear coordinates, manifolds, and the vector derivative are introduced.

# Notation

For simplicity, let’s consider the concrete example of a 2D manifold, a surface in an $n$ dimensional vector space, parameterized by two variables

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = \mathbf{x}(a,b) = \mathbf{x}(u^1, u^2).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.1)

Note that the indices here do not represent exponentiation. We can construct a basis for the manifold as

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_i = \frac{\partial {\mathbf{x}}}{\partial {u^i}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.2)

On the manifold we can calculate a reciprocal basis $\{\mathbf{x}^i\}$, defined by requiring, at each point on the surface

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^i \cdot \mathbf{x}_j = {\delta^i}_j.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.3)

Associated implicitly with this basis is a curvilinear coordinate representation defined by the projection operation

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^i \mathbf{x}_i,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.4)

(sums over mixed indexes are implied). These coordinates can be calculated by taking dot products with the reciprocal frame vectors

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^i &= x^j \mathbf{x}_j \cdot \mathbf{x}^i \\ &= x^j {\delta_j}^i \\ &= x^i.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.4)

# Examples

Let’s pause for a couple examples that have interesting aspects.

## Example: Circular coordinates on a disk

Consider an infinite disk at height $z_0$, with the origin omitted, parameterized by circular coordinates as in fig. 1.1.

Fig 1.1: Plane with circular coordinates

Points on this surface are

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}(r, \theta) = (r \cos\theta, r \sin\theta, z_0).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.3.6)

The manifold basis vectors, defined by eq. 1.2.2 are

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_r &= (\cos\theta, \sin\theta, 0) \\ \mathbf{x}_\theta &= r (-\sin\theta, \cos\theta, 0).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.3.7)

By inspection, the reciprocal basis is

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^r &= (\cos\theta, \sin\theta, 0) \\ \mathbf{x}^\theta &= \frac{1}{{r}} (-\sin\theta, \cos\theta, 0).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.3.8)

The first thing to note here is that we cannot reach the points $\mathbf{x}$ of eq. 1.3.6 by linear combination of these basis vectors. Instead these basis vectors only allow us to reach other points on the surface, when already there. For example we cannot actually write

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^r \mathbf{x}_r + x^\theta \mathbf{x}_\theta,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.3.9)

unless $z_0 = 0$. This is why eq. 1.2.4 was described as a projective operation (and probably deserves an alternate notation). To recover the original parameterized form of the position vector on the surface, we require

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^r \mathbf{x}_r + x^\theta \mathbf{x}_\theta + z_0 \hat{\mathbf{z}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.3.10)

The coordinates $x^r, x^\theta$ follow by taking dot products

\begin{aligned}x^r &= \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^r \\ &= (r \cos\theta, r \sin\theta, z_0) \cdot(\cos\theta, \sin\theta, 0) \\ &= r \left( \cos^2 \theta + \sin^2 \theta \right) \\ &= r\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.11.11)

\begin{aligned}x^\theta &= \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^\theta \\ &= (r \cos\theta, r \sin\theta, z_0) \cdot\frac{1}{{r}} (-\sin\theta, \cos\theta, 0) \\ &= 0.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.11.11)

Therefore, a point on the plane, relative to the origin of the plane, in this case, requires just one of the tangent plane basis vectors

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = r \mathbf{x}_r.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.11.11)

## Example: Circumference of a circle

Now consider a circular perimeter, as illustrated in fig. 1.2, with the single variable parameterization

Fig 1.2: Circular perimeter

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = r_0 \left( \cos\theta, \sin\theta \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.13)

Our tangent space basis is

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}_\theta = r_0 \left( -\sin\theta, \cos\theta \right),\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.14)

with, by inspection, a reciprocal basis

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x}^\theta = \frac{1}{{r_0}} \left( -\sin\theta, \cos\theta \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.15)

Here we have a curious condition, since the tangent space basis vector is perpendicular to the position vector for the points on the circular surface. So, should we attempt to calculate coordinates using eq. 1.2.4, we just get zero

\begin{aligned}x^\theta &= \mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{x}^\theta \\ &= r_0 \left( \cos\theta, \sin\theta \right) \cdot\frac{1}{{r_0}} \left( -\sin\theta, \cos\theta \right) \\ &= 0.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.16)

It’s perhaps notable that a coordinate representation using the tangent space basis is possible, but we need to utilize a complex geometry. Assuming

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^\theta \mathbf{x}_\theta,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.17)

and writing $i = \mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2$ for the pseudoscalar, we can write

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} &= r_0 \mathbf{e}_1 e^{i\theta} \\ \mathbf{x}_\theta &= r_0 \mathbf{e}_2 e^{i\theta},\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.18)

so that, by inversion, the $\theta$ coordinate is

\begin{aligned}x^\theta &= \mathbf{x}\frac{1}{{\mathbf{x}_\theta}} \\ &= \left( r_0 \mathbf{e}_1 e^{i\theta} \right)\left( \frac{ e^{-i\theta } \mathbf{e}_2 }{r_0} \right) \\ &= i,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.19)

or

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = i \mathbf{x}_\theta.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.20)

## Example: Surface of a sphere

It is also clear that any parameterization that has radial symmetry will suffer the same issue. For example, for a radial surface in 3D with radius $r_0$ we have

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} &= r_0 \left( \sin\theta \cos\phi, \sin\theta \sin\phi, \cos\theta \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\theta &= r_0 \left( \cos\theta \cos\phi, \cos\theta \sin\phi, -\sin\theta \right) \\ \mathbf{x}_\phi &= r_0 \left( -\sin\theta \sin\phi, \sin\theta \cos\phi, 0 \right) \\ \mathbf{x}^\theta &= \frac{1}{{r_0}} \left( \cos\theta \cos\phi, \cos\theta \sin\phi, -\sin\theta \right) \\ \mathbf{x}^\phi &= \frac{1}{{r_0 \sin\theta}} \left( -\sin\phi, \cos\phi, 0 \right).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.21)

The reciprocals here were computed using the mathematica reciprocalFrameSphericalSurface.nb notebook.

Do we have a bivector parameterization of the surface using the tangent space basis? Let’s try

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^\theta \mathbf{x}_\theta + x^\phi \mathbf{x}_\phi.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.22)

Wedging with $\mathbf{x}_\theta$ and $\mathbf{x}_\phi$, and writing $i = \mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_2$, respectively yields

\begin{aligned}x^\theta &= \mathbf{x} \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi \frac{1}{{\mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi}} \\ &= -\mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_3 \cos \phi - \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \sin \phi \\ &= \mathbf{e}_{31} e^{ i \phi}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.22)

\begin{aligned}x^\phi &= -\mathbf{x} \wedge \mathbf{x}_\theta \frac{1}{{\mathbf{x}_\theta \wedge \mathbf{x}_\phi}} \\ &= \mathbf{e}_1 \mathbf{e}_3 \cot \theta \sin \phi + i -\mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \cot \theta \cos \phi \\ &= \mathbf{e}_2 \mathbf{e}_3 \cot \theta e^{i \phi} + i.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.22)

However, substitution back into eq. 1.0.22 shows either pair parameterizes the radial position vector

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{x} = x^\theta \mathbf{x}_\theta = x^\phi \mathbf{x}_\phi.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.25)

It is interesting that duality relationships seem to naturally arise attempting to describe points on a surface using the tangent space basis for that surface.

# References

[1] A. Macdonald. Vector and Geometric Calculus. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.

## Nuland’s recent state dept Ukraine speech

Posted by peeterjoot on February 21, 2014

Here is a presstv article, referring to a State department speech on Ukraine by Nuland.

In the spirit of Andrew Gavin Marshall’s podcasts, I would love to see a full translation of this speech into English from Statelish.  I imagine that the key to such a translation it would be along the following lines:

 democratic state ; modern democratic government state subservient to the USA free democracies democracies not subservient to the USA return to economic health economics subservient to the USA coordinated parallel high level diplomacy an active attempt to undermine existing government ; financing and manufacturing subversive and violent elements a tough conversation with Yanacovich I showed him lots of the blackmail material we have collected on him.  Made him realize how short his life would be if he doesn’t cooperate.  Threatened military and financial warfare. de-escalate the security situation step down so that we can install a puppet government, preferably one even more violent get Ukraine back into a conversation with Europe and with the International Monetary Fund we will fuck you over if you take on debt that will allow Russia to control you instead of taking on our debt and controls reforms that the IMF insists on are necessary for the long term economic health of the country we plan to fuck your kids and all their future progeny too foreign investment needed US exploitation is strongly desired

## Gaussian quadratic form integrals and multivariable approximation of exponential integrals

Posted by peeterjoot on January 26, 2014

[Click here for a PDF of this post with nicer formatting (especially if my latex to wordpress script has left FORMULA DOES NOT PARSE errors.)]

# Motivation

In [1] eq. I.2.20 is the approximation

\begin{aligned}\int d\mathbf{q} e^{-f(\mathbf{q})/\hbar} \approx e^{-f(\mathbf{a})/\hbar} \sqrt{\frac{2 \pi \hbar}{\text{Det} f''(\mathbf{a})} },\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.1.1)

where $[ f''(\mathbf{a}) ]_{ij} \equiv {\left.{{\partial^2 f/\partial q_i \partial q_j}}\right\vert}_{{\mathbf{q} = \mathbf{a}}}$. Here $\mathbf{a}$ is assumed to be an extremum of $f$. This follows from a generalization of the Gaussian integral result. Let’s derive both in detail.

# Guts

First, to second order, let’s expand $f(\mathbf{q})$ around a min or max at $\mathbf{q} = \mathbf{a}$. The usual trick, presuming that one doesn’t remember the form of this generalized Taylor expansion, is to expand $g(t) = f(\mathbf{a} + t \mathbf{q})$ around $t = 0$, then evaluate at $t = 1$. We have

\begin{aligned}g'(t) &= \sum_i \frac{\partial {f(\mathbf{a} + t \mathbf{q})}}{\partial {(a_i + t q_i)}} \frac{d{{ (a_i + t q_i) }}}{dt} \\ &= \sum_i q_i \frac{\partial {f(\mathbf{a} + t \mathbf{q})}}{\partial {(a_i + t q_i)}} \\ &= \mathbf{q} \cdot \left( {\left.{{\boldsymbol{\nabla}_\mathbf{q} f(\mathbf{q})}}\right\vert}_{{\mathbf{q} = \mathbf{a} + t \mathbf{q}}} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.2)

The second derivative is

\begin{aligned}g''(t) = \sum_{i j} q_i q_j \frac{\partial {}}{\partial {(a_j + t q_j)}} \frac{\partial {f(\mathbf{a} + t \mathbf{q})}}{\partial {(a_i + t q_i)}},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.3)

This gives

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}g'(0) &= \mathbf{q} \cdot \boldsymbol{\nabla}_\mathbf{q} f(\mathbf{q}) = \sum_i q_i \partial q_i f(\mathbf{q}) \\ g''(0) &= \left( \mathbf{q} \cdot \boldsymbol{\nabla}_\mathbf{q} \right)^2 f(\mathbf{q}) = \sum_{i j} q_i q_j \partial q_i \partial q_j f(\mathbf{q}).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.4)

Putting these together, we have to second order in $t$ is

\begin{aligned}f(\mathbf{a} + t \mathbf{q}) \approx f(\mathbf{a}) + \sum_i q_i \partial q_i f(\mathbf{q}) \frac{t^1}{1!}+ \sum_{i j} q_i q_j \partial q_i \partial q_j f(\mathbf{q}) \frac{t^2}{2!},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.5)

or

\begin{aligned}f(\mathbf{a} + \mathbf{q}) \approx f(\mathbf{a}) + \sum_i q_i {\left.{{ \left( \frac{\partial {f}}{\partial {q_i}} \right)}}\right\vert}_{\mathbf{a}}+ \frac{1}{{2}} \sum_{i j} q_i q_j {\left.{{\left( \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial q_i \partial q_j} \right)}}\right\vert}_{\mathbf{a}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.2.6)

We can put the terms up to second order in a nice tidy matrix forms

\begin{aligned}\mathbf{b} = {\left.{{\left( \boldsymbol{\nabla}_\mathbf{q} f \right)}}\right\vert}_{\mathbf{a}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.7a)

\begin{aligned}A = {\begin{bmatrix}{\left.{{ \left( \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial q_i \partial q_j} \right)}}\right\vert}_{\mathbf{a}}\end{bmatrix}}_{i j}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.7b)

Note that eq. 1.0.7b is a real symmetric matrix, and can thus be reduced to diagonal form by an orthonormal transformation. Putting the pieces together, we have

\begin{aligned}f(\mathbf{a} + \mathbf{q}) \approx f(\mathbf{a}) + \mathbf{q}^\text{T} \mathbf{b} + \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{q}^\text{T} A \mathbf{q}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.8)

Integrating this, we have

\begin{aligned}\int dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \exp\left( -\left( f(\mathbf{a}) + \mathbf{q}^\text{T} \mathbf{b} + \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{q}^\text{T} A \mathbf{q} \right)\right)=e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\int dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \exp\left( -\mathbf{q}^\text{T} \mathbf{b} - \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{q}^\text{T} A \mathbf{q} \right).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.9)

Employing an orthonormal change of variables to diagonalizae the matrix

\begin{aligned}A = O^\text{T} D O,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

and $\mathbf{r} = O \mathbf{q}$, or $r_i = O_{ik} q_k$, the volume element after transformation is

\begin{aligned}dr_1 dr_2 \cdots dr_N &= \frac{\partial(r_1, r_2, \cdots, r_N)}{\partial(q_1, q_2, \cdots, q_N)}dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \\ &= \begin{vmatrix}O_{11} & O_{12} & \cdots & O_{1N} \\ O_{21} & O_{22} & \cdots & O_{2N} \\ \dot{v}s & \dot{v}s & \dot{v}s & \dot{v}s \\ O_{N1} & O_{N2} & \cdots & O_{NN} \\ \end{vmatrix}dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \\ &= (\text{Det} O)dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \\ &= dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

Our integral is

\begin{aligned}e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\int dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \exp\left( -\mathbf{q}^\text{T} \mathbf{b} - \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{q}^\text{T} A \mathbf{q} \right) &= e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\int dr_1 dr_2 \cdots dr_N \exp\left( -\mathbf{q}^\text{T} O^\text{T} O \mathbf{b} - \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{q}^\text{T} O^\text{T} D O \mathbf{q} \right) \\ &= e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\int dr_1 dr_2 \cdots dr_N \exp\left( -\mathbf{r}^\text{T} (O \mathbf{b}) - \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{r}^\text{T} D \mathbf{r} \right) \\ &= e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\int dr_1 e^{ -\frac{1}{{2}} r_1^2 \lambda_1 - r_1 (O \mathbf{b})_1 }\int dr_2 e^{ -\frac{1}{{2}} r_2^2 \lambda_2 - r_2 (O \mathbf{b})_2 }\cdots \int dr_N e^{ -\frac{1}{{2}} r_N^2 \lambda_N - r_N (O \mathbf{b})_N }.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

We now have products of terms that are of the regular Gaussian form. One such integral is

\begin{aligned}\int e^{-a x^2/2 + J x} &= \int \exp\left(-\frac{1}{{2}} \left(\left( \sqrt{a} x - J/\sqrt{a} \right)^2- \left( J/\sqrt{a} \right)^2\right)\right) \\ &= e^{J^2/2a} \sqrt{2 \pi \int_0^\infty r dr e^{-a r^2/2}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

This is just

\begin{aligned}\int e^{-a x^2/2 + J x}= e^{J^2/2a} \sqrt{ \frac{2 \pi}{a} }.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

Applying this to the integral of interest, writing $m_i = (O \mathbf{b})_i$

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\int &dq_1 dq_2 \cdots dq_N \exp\left( -\mathbf{q}^\text{T} \mathbf{b} - \frac{1}{{2}} \mathbf{q}^\text{T} A \mathbf{q} \right) \\ &=e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}e^{-m_1^2/2\lambda_1} \sqrt{ \frac{2 \pi}{\lambda_1}}e^{-m_2^2/2\lambda_2} \sqrt{ \frac{2 \pi}{\lambda_2}}\cdots e^{-m_N^2/2\lambda_N} \sqrt{ \frac{2 \pi}{\lambda_N}} \\ &=e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\sqrt{\frac{2 \pi}{\text{Det} A}}\exp\left(-\frac{1}{{2}}\left( -m_1^2/\lambda_1 -m_2^2/\lambda_2 \cdots -m_N^2/\lambda_N \right) \right).\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

This last exponential argument can be put into matrix form

\begin{aligned}-m_1^2/\lambda_1-m_2^2/\lambda_2\cdots -m_N^2/\lambda_N &= (O \mathbf{b})^\text{T} D^{-1} O \mathbf{b} \\ &= \mathbf{b}^\text{T} O^\text{T} D^{-1} O \mathbf{b} \\ &= \mathbf{b}^\text{T} A^{-1} \mathbf{b},\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

Finally, referring back to eq. 1.0.7, we have

\begin{aligned}\int d\mathbf{q} e^{-f(\mathbf{q})} \approx e^{-f(\mathbf{a})}\sqrt{\frac{2 \pi}{\text{Det} A}}e^{-\mathbf{b}^\text{T} A^{-1} \mathbf{b}/2}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

Observe that we can recover eq. 1.1.1 by noting that $\mathbf{b} = 0$ for that system was assumed (i.e. $\mathbf{a}$ was an extremum point), and by noting that the determinant scales with $1/\hbar$ since it just contains the second partials.

An afterword on notational sugar:

We didn’t need it, but it seems worth noting that we can write the Taylor expansion of eq. 1.0.8 in operator form as

\begin{aligned}f(\mathbf{a} + \mathbf{q}) = \sum_{k = 0}^\infty \frac{1}{{k!}} {\left.{{ \left( \mathbf{q} \cdot \boldsymbol{\nabla}_{\mathbf{q}'} \right)^k f(\mathbf{q}') }}\right\vert}_{{\mathbf{q}' = \mathbf{a}}}={\left.{{ e^{\mathbf{q} \cdot \boldsymbol{\nabla}_{\mathbf{q}'}} f(\mathbf{q}') }}\right\vert}_{{\mathbf{q}' = \mathbf{a}}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.18)

# References

[1] A. Zee. Quantum field theory in a nutshell. Universities Press, 2005.

## Polarization angles for normal transmission and reflection

Posted by peeterjoot on January 22, 2014

## Question: Polarization angles for normal transmission and reflection ([1] pr 9.14)

For normal incidence, without assuming that the reflected and transmitted waves have the same polarization as the incident wave, prove that this must be so.

Working with coordinates as illustrated in fig. 1.1, the incident wave can be assumed to have the form

fig 1.1: Normal incidence coordinates

\begin{aligned}\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{I}} = E_{\mathrm{I}} e^{i (k z - \omega t)} \hat{\mathbf{x}}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.1a)

\begin{aligned}\tilde{\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{I}} = \frac{1}{{v}} \hat{\mathbf{z}} \times \tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{I}} = \frac{1}{{v}} E_{\mathrm{I}} e^{i (k z - \omega t)} \hat{\mathbf{y}}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.1b)

Assuming a polarization $\hat{\mathbf{n}} = \cos\theta \hat{\mathbf{x}} + \sin\theta \hat{\mathbf{y}}$ for the reflected wave, we have

\begin{aligned}\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{R}} = E_{\mathrm{R}} e^{i (-k z - \omega t)} (\hat{\mathbf{x}} \cos\theta + \hat{\mathbf{y}} \sin\theta)\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.2a)

\begin{aligned}\tilde{\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{R}} = \frac{1}{{v}} (-\hat{\mathbf{z}}) \times \tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{R}} = \frac{1}{{v}} E_{\mathrm{R}} e^{i (-k z - \omega t)} (\hat{\mathbf{x}} \sin\theta - \hat{\mathbf{y}} \cos\theta).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.2b)

And finally assuming a polarization $\hat{\mathbf{n}} = \cos\phi \hat{\mathbf{x}} + \sin\phi \hat{\mathbf{y}}$ for the transmitted wave, we have

\begin{aligned}\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{T}} = E_{\mathrm{T}} e^{i (k' z - \omega t)} (\hat{\mathbf{x}} \cos\phi + \hat{\mathbf{y}} \sin\phi)\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.3a)

\begin{aligned}\tilde{\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{T}} = \frac{1}{{v}} \hat{\mathbf{z}} \times \tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{T}} = \frac{1}{{v'}} E_{\mathrm{T}} e^{i (k' z - \omega t)} (-\hat{\mathbf{x}} \sin\phi + \hat{\mathbf{y}} \cos\phi).\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.3b)

With no components of any of the $\tilde{\mathbf{E}}$ or $\tilde{\mathbf{B}}$ waves in the $\hat{\mathbf{z}}$ directions the boundary value conditions at $z = 0$ require the equality of the $\hat{\mathbf{x}}$ and $\hat{\mathbf{y}}$ components of

\begin{aligned}\left( \tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{I}} + \tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{R}} \right)_{x,y} = \left( \tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{T}} \right)_{x,y}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.4a)

\begin{aligned} \left( \frac{1}{\mu} \left( \tilde{\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{I}} + \tilde{\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{R}} \right) \right)_{x,y} = \left( \frac{1}{\mu'} \tilde{\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{T}} \right)_{x,y}.\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.4b)

With $\beta = \mu v/\mu' v'$, those components are

\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{I}} + E_{\mathrm{R}} \cos\theta = E_{\mathrm{T}} \cos\phi \end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.5a)

\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{R}} \sin\theta = E_{\mathrm{T}} \sin\phi\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.5b)

\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{R}} \sin\theta = - \beta E_{\mathrm{T}} \sin\phi\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.5c)

\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{I}} - E_{\mathrm{R}} \cos\theta = \beta E_{\mathrm{T}} \cos\phi\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.5d)

Equality of eq. 1.0.5b, and eq. 1.0.5c require

\begin{aligned}- \beta E_{\mathrm{T}} \sin\phi = E_{\mathrm{T}} \sin\phi,\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.6)

or $(\theta, \phi) \in \{(0, 0), (0, \pi), (\pi, 0), (\pi, \pi)\}$. It turns out that all of these solutions correspond to the same physical waves. Let’s look at each in turn

• $(\theta, \phi) = (0, 0)$. The system eq. 1.0.5.5 is reduced to

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{I}} + E_{\mathrm{R}} &= E_{\mathrm{T}} \\ E_{\mathrm{I}} - E_{\mathrm{R}} &= \beta E_{\mathrm{T}},\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.7)

with solution

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\frac{E_{\mathrm{T}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= \frac{2}{1 + \beta} \\ \frac{E_{\mathrm{R}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= \frac{1 - \beta}{1 + \beta}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.8)

• $(\theta, \phi) = (\pi, \pi)$. The system eq. 1.0.5.5 is reduced to

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{I}} - E_{\mathrm{R}} &= -E_{\mathrm{T}} \\ E_{\mathrm{I}} + E_{\mathrm{R}} &= -\beta E_{\mathrm{T}},\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.9)

with solution

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\frac{E_{\mathrm{T}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= -\frac{2}{1 + \beta} \\ \frac{E_{\mathrm{R}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= -\frac{1 - \beta}{1 + \beta}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.10)

Effectively the sign for the magnitude of the transmitted and reflected phasors is toggled, but the polarization vectors are also negated, with $\hat{\mathbf{n}} = -\hat{\mathbf{x}}$, and $\hat{\mathbf{n}}' = -\hat{\mathbf{x}}$. The resulting $\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{R}}$ and $\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{T}}$ are unchanged relative to those of the $(0,0)$ solution above.

• $(\theta, \phi) = (0, \pi)$. The system eq. 1.0.5.5 is reduced to

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{I}} + E_{\mathrm{R}} &= -E_{\mathrm{T}} \\ E_{\mathrm{I}} - E_{\mathrm{R}} &= -\beta E_{\mathrm{T}},\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.11)

with solution

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\frac{E_{\mathrm{T}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= -\frac{2}{1 + \beta} \\ \frac{E_{\mathrm{R}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= \frac{1 - \beta}{1 + \beta}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.12)

Effectively the sign for the magnitude of the transmitted phasor is toggled. The polarization vectors in this case are $\hat{\mathbf{n}} = \hat{\mathbf{x}}$, and $\hat{\mathbf{n}}' = -\hat{\mathbf{x}}$, so the transmitted phasor magnitude change of sign does not change $\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{T}}$ relative to that of the $(0,0)$ solution above.

• $(\theta, \phi) = (\pi, 0)$. The system eq. 1.0.5.5 is reduced to

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}E_{\mathrm{I}} - E_{\mathrm{R}} &= E_{\mathrm{T}} \\ E_{\mathrm{I}} + E_{\mathrm{R}} &= \beta E_{\mathrm{T}},\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.13)

with solution

\begin{aligned}\begin{aligned}\frac{E_{\mathrm{T}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= \frac{2}{1 + \beta} \\ \frac{E_{\mathrm{R}}}{E_{\mathrm{I}}} &= -\frac{1 - \beta}{1 + \beta}.\end{aligned}\end{aligned} \hspace{\stretch{1}}(1.0.14)

This time, the sign for the magnitude of the reflected phasor is toggled. The polarization vectors in this case are $\hat{\mathbf{n}} = -\hat{\mathbf{x}}$, and $\hat{\mathbf{n}}' = \hat{\mathbf{x}}$. In this final variation the reflected phasor magnitude change of sign does not change $\tilde{\mathbf{E}}_{\mathrm{R}}$ relative to that of the $(0,0)$ solution.

We see that there is only one solution for the polarization angle of the transmitted and reflected waves relative to the incident wave. Although we fixed the incident polarization with $\mathbf{E}$ along $\hat{\mathbf{x}}$, the polarization of the incident wave is maintained regardless of TE or TM labeling in this example, since our system is symmetric with respect to rotation.

# References

[1] D.J. Griffith. Introduction to Electrodynamics. Prentice-Hall, 1981.