Quaternions, Spinors and the Hopf Fibration: Hidden Variables in Classical Mechanics

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Publication date: 21 December 2015

Abstract: Rotations in 3 dimensional space are equally described by the SU(2) and SO(3) groups. These isomorphic groups generate the same 3D kinematics using different algebraic structures of the unit quaternion. The Hopf Fibration is a projection between the hypersphere

m a t h b b S^{3}

of the quaternion in 4D space, and the unit sphere

m a t h b b S^{2}

in 3D space. Great circles in

m a t h b b S^{3}

are mapped to points in

m a t h b b S^{2}

via the 6 Hopf maps, and are illustrated via the stereographic projection. The higher and lower dimensional spaces are connected via the

m a t h b b S^{1}

fibre bundle which consists of the global, geometric and dynamic phases. The global phase is quantized in integer multiples of

2 p i

and presents itself as a natural hidden variable of Classical Mechanics.

Has companion code repository: https://github.com/mo-geometry/parallel_transport

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