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Clifford (i.e. "geometric") algebras are of some mathematical interest, but for physics the only real value I've seen from them is in offering a fairly nice presentation of spin groups, which is ultimately where the Dirac matrices come from. The geometric algebra advocacy, so far as I can tell, comes entirely from engineers who were never given a proper account of tensors in the first place: it's certainly an improvement over whatever godawful basis-dependent stuff gets taught there.


I found it a much nicer way to think about physical concepts.

Torque and magnetism, for example, make much more sense as bivectors.

And never having to do the right-hand rule is a nice plus.


I'd be interested to know your opinion on space-time algebras. They seem like they would provide a nice way of unifying spatial rotations and Lorentz boosts, but that may be blind optimism as your last sentence seems to have been written to describe me specifically...


Spacetime algebra is just the Clifford algebra Cl_1_3(R), so all of the above applies.

> They seem like they would provide a nice way of unifying spatial rotations and Lorentz boosts

Yes and no: the right way to unify rotations and boosts is to consider them as the orientation-preserving elements of the Lorentz group (sometimes called the proper Lorentz group). You can construct this from the corresponding Clifford algebra, but it's somewhat technical and not physically well-motivated until you start dealing with spinors. It's also the group of symmetries of spacetime that leave the origin unchanged, which is far, far more natural.




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