Clifford Algebra

Geometric algebra (GA), also known as Clifford algebra, is a powerful unifying framework for geometric computations that extends the classical techniques of linear algebra and vector calculus in a structural manner. Its benefits include cleaner computer-program solutions for known geometric computation tasks, and the ability to address increasingly more involved applications.

Since its invention, geometric algebra has been applied to various branches of physics such as cosmology and electrodynamics, and is now being embraced by the computer graphics community where it is providing new ways of solving geometric problems. It took over two thousand years to discover this algebra, which uses a simple and consistent notation to describe vectors and their products.

Clifford algebra, then called geometric algebra, was introduced more than a cenetury ago by William K. Clifford, building on work by Grassmann and Hamilton. Clifford or geometric algebra shows strong unifying aspects and turned out in the 1960s to be a most adequate formalism for describing different geometry-related algebraic systems as specializations of one "mother algebra" in various subfields of physics and engineering.

Clifford algebras are at a crossing point in a variety of research areas, including abstract algebra, crystallography, projective geometry, quantum mechanics, differential geometry and analysis. For many researchers working in this field in ma- thematics and physics, computer algebra software systems have become indispensable tools in theory and applications.

Clifford algebras are at a crossing point in a variety of research areas, including abstract algebra, crystallography, projective geometry, quantum mechanics, differential geometry and analysis.

Matrix algebra has been called "the arithmetic of higher mathematics" [Be]. We think the basis for a better arithmetic has long been available, but its versatility has hardly been appreciated, and it has not yet been integrated into the mainstream of mathematics.