A binary encoding of spinors and applications (Q2204090)

Spinors were first discovered by \textit{E. Cartan} [The theory of spinors. Rev. ed. Paris: Hermann \& Cie (1966; Zbl 0147.40101)], and have been of great relevance in mathematics and physics. In this note, the authors introduce a binary code for spinors using a suitable basis and setting up a correspondence between its elements and non-negative integers via their binary decompositions. Such a basis consists of weight vectors of the spin representation as presented by [\textit{T. Friedrich} and \textit{S. Sulanke}, Colloq. Math. 40, 239--247 (1979; Zbl 0426.58023)]. This basis is known to physicists as a Fock basis [\textit{P. Budinich} and \textit{A. Trautman}, J. Math. Phys. 30, No. 9, 2125--2131 (1989; Zbl 0684.46062)]. The new code the authors propose uses half the number of bits used by other binary codes of Clifford algebras, thus making it computationally more efficient. Moreover, Clifford multiplication of vectors with spinors becomes a matter of flipping bits in binary expressions and keeping track of powers of \(\sqrt{-1}\). As applications, the authors develop explicit descriptions of some well-known facts such as the triality automorphism of \(\text{Spin}(8)\) (avoiding entirely any reference to the octonions), the relationship between Clifford multiplication and the multiplication table of the octonions, and the construction of sets of linearly independent vector fields on spheres.