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The cross product with respect to a right-handed coordinate system. In mathematics, the cross product or vector product (occasionally directed area product, to emphasize its geometric significance) is a binary operation on two vectors in a three-dimensional oriented Euclidean vector space (named here ), and is denoted by the symbol .
For example, the inner product of a polar vector and an axial vector resulting from the cross product in the triple product should result in a pseudoscalar, a result which is more obvious if the calculation is framed as the exterior product of a vector and bivector. They generalise to other dimensions; in particular bivectors can be used to ...
Vector algebra relations — regarding operations on individual vectors such as dot product, cross product, etc. Vector calculus identities — regarding operations on vector fields such as divergence, gradient, curl, etc.
The Lie algebra of bivectors is essentially that of complex 3-vectors, with the Lie product being defined to be the familiar cross product in (complex) 3-dimensional space. [3] William Rowan Hamilton coined both the terms vector and bivector.
The cross product of vectors and is a vector perpendicular to the plane spanned by and with the direction given by the right-hand rule: If you put the index of your right hand on and the middle finger on , then the thumb points in the direction of .
The vector, and so the cross product, comes from the contraction of this bivector with a trivector. In three dimensions, up to a scale factor there is only one trivector, the pseudoscalar of the space, and a product of the above bivector and one of the two unit trivectors gives the vector result, the dual of the bivector.
The following are important identities in vector algebra.Identities that only involve the magnitude of a vector ‖ ‖ and the dot product (scalar product) of two vectors A·B, apply to vectors in any dimension, while identities that use the cross product (vector product) A×B only apply in three dimensions, since the cross product is only defined there.
If geometric algebra is used the cross product b × c of vectors is expressed as their exterior product b∧c, a bivector. The second cross product cannot be expressed as an exterior product, otherwise the scalar triple product would result. Instead a left contraction [6] can be used, so the formula becomes [7]