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    (AJP) (Nguyen) Plücker's Relations and The Electromagnetic Field

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    jcb1961

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Plucker’s relations and the electromagnetic field D. B. Nguyen Yale University, School of Medicine, Department of Therapeute Radiology, 333 Cedar Stee, [New Haven, Conneciat 055108040 and University of Along, Instivwe of Electronic Sytem Fredrik Bajers Vj 7, DK-9220 dlborg 6, Denmark (Received 11 November 1991; accepted 23 May 1992) Every two-dimensional parallelogram in three dimensions casts three parallelogram-shaped shadows onto the three coordinate planes; the signed areas of these shadows are real numbers. Conversely, every set of three real numbers can always be identified with the signed areas of parallelogram-shaped shadows of some one parallelogram. It is never necessary in three dimensions to invoke more than one parallelogram for this purpose. In higher dimensions, however, this converse is not true; to be the signed volumes of the p-dimensional shadows of some one p-dimensional parallelopiped in n dimensions, a set of numbers must satisfy several quadratic equations known collectively as Pliicker’s relations. When the six electromagnetic field components (three electric, three magnetic) are viewed as signed areas of the shadows of a parallelogram in space time, all inertial observers must agree on the number of parallelogram. Pliicker’s relations applied to these six numbers must, therefore, produce relativistic invariants. 1. INTRODUCTION Julius Plicker introduced two algebraic concept into the study of the geometry of subspaces of a finite-dimensional vector space. They are known today as the Plicker coor- dinates! and the Pliicker’s relations.” This paper shows the ‘connection between Pliicker’s concepts and the electro- magnetic field. Geometrically, the three electric field com- ponents and the three magnetic field components of an electromagnetic field at a point are the areas of six two- dimensional shadows of at most two parallelograms in four-dimensional spacetime. Plicker’s relations, a set of quadratic equations, are necessary and sufficient conditions that the six areas come from exactly one parallelogram in four dimensions. When the six areas are identified with the electromagnetic field components, Pliicker’s relations are equivalent to the condition that the electric field E and D are perpendicular to the magnetic field B and H, respec- tively. Since all inertial observers must agree on the num- ber of parallelograms, any necessary and sufficient condi- tion that there is only one parallelogram must be a relativistic invariant. I, THE GEOMETRY OF PLUCKER’S COORDINATES AND PLUCKER’S RELATIONS A. A three-dimensional motivation Let V be R° with its usual Cartesian basis, denoted by fevenes}: ay With respect to this basis, any vector in V can be repre- sented by a 3-tuple of real numbers. Since there are only three basis vectors in Eq. (1), there are precisely three coordinate planes because each plane is made up of two basis vectors, and there are three combinations of three things taken two at a time. Any two vectors'v and w in V define a parallelogram (if they are collinear, the parallelo- gram is considered degenerate with area equal zero). We denote this parallelogram by vAw. Clearly, when w=y, the parallelogram vy has zero area. We take, as a con- vention (called orientation”), that the parallelogram wAv made up of w and ¥ will simply be the negative of the parallelogram vA w. We now take these geometric motiva- 1145 Am. J. Phys. 60 (12), December 1992 n in the symbol v A w formally to be the definition of the operator \ (read “wedge,” or “exterior product”). To facilitate its operation with other geometric processes of vector addition and scalar multiplication, we define the A to distribute over vector addition and commutes with sca- lar multiplication. Applying the wedge to the three pairs of ‘basis vectors in Eq. (1), one obtains the two-dimensional analog of “basis vectors,” namely, “basis parallelograms.” They are denoted by feAen erAey eres}. (2) Note that from our geometric motivation from parallel- ‘ograms, there is no basis parallelogram of the form ¢,/\e, (because its area would be zero), or of the form e;/e; for J>4, [because it would be —e;Ae; (by convention) and hence is not linearly independent). Using the properties of the exterior product, one can expand any parallelogram defined by two vectors v and w into a linear combination of basis parallelograms in Eq (2). The three coefficients of this linear combination are called the Plicker’s coordinates of the parallelogram v Aw. They are the areas (signed, by the convention above) of the parallelogram’s projected shadows onto the coordinate planes in Eq. (2). Pliicker’s relations are concerned with the converse: Given any three numbers, how do we know that they are the Pliicker’s coordinates of some parallelogram? The re- lationship among the three numbers that answers this question is a special case of the general Pliicker’s relations, to be described in detail subsequently. [Given a set of Pliicker’s coordinates, the parallelogram having those given coordinates are not unique in general. For example, the parallelogram made up of the two vectors (1,0,0) and (0,1,0) has the same Pliicker's coordinates as that made up of two different vectors (2,0,0) and (0,1/2,0). This nonu- niiqueness is to be expected, however, in the same way that 9X2 and 6X3 are both equal to 18; it will not play a major role in this paper.) © 1992 American Association of Physics Teachers 1145, B, Pliicker’s coordinates in general Let V be an n-dimensional vector space with basis, Leiseantah a) Analogous to the case of parallelograms, we form p- dimensional basis parallelopipeds using the exterior prod- uct Le, Neh Ney} Ish

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