Pythagorean vectors and Clifford numbers (Q451101): Difference between revisions

Simple reflections or rotations of canonical vectors are used to generate all Pythagorean vectors, i.e. vectors \(\mathbf{x}\in\mathbb{Q}^n\) of the form \[ \mathbf{x}=\left(\frac{x_1}{x_{n+1}},\dots,\frac{x_n}{x_{n+1}}\right) \] where \(x_1 , \dots , x_{n+1}\) are integers such that \(x_{n+1}\neq 0\) and the equation \(x_1^2+\dots+x_n^2= x_{n+1}^2\) is satisfied. The generalized Clifford numbers (elements of a Clifford algebra over \(\mathbb{R}\) with signature \((p, q)\), \(p + q = n\)) are used to generate all generalized Pythagorean vectors, that is, all vectors \(\mathbf{x}\) \[ \mathbf{x}=\left( \frac{x_1}{x_{n+1}},\dots,\frac{x_n}{x_{n+1}}, \frac{x_{p+1}}{x_{n+1}},\dots,\frac{x_{p+q}}{x_{n+1}} \right), \] where \(x_1 , \dots , x_{n+1},x_{n+1}\neq 0\) are integers such that \(x_1^2+\dots+x_p^2= x_{p+1}^2+\dots+x_{p+q}^2+x_{n+1}^2\). In the both cases, a constructive method is presented that explicitly provides an algorithm to generate generalized Pythagorean numbers.