English

Calculus with a Quaternionic Variable

Functional Analysis 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

Most of theoretical physics is based on the mathematics of functions of a real or a complex variable; yet we frequently are drawn to try extending our reach to include quaternions. The non-commutativity of the quaternion algebra poses obstacles for the usual manipulations of calculus; but we show in this paper how many of those obstacles can be overcome. The surprising result is that the first order term in the expansion of F(x+delta) is a compact formula involving both F'(x) and [F(x) - F(x*)]/(x-x*). This advance in the differential calculus for quaternionic variables also leads us to some progress in studying integration.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.1185,
  title  = {Calculus with a Quaternionic Variable},
  author = {Charles Schwartz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.1185},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

16 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:48:49.567Z