Quaternionic matrix

A quaternionic matrix is a matrix whose elements are quaternions.

Matrix operations

Matrix addition is defined in the usual way:

$(A+B)_{ij}=A_{ij}+B_{ij}.\,$

The product of two quaternionic matrices follows the usual definition for matrix multiplication. That is, the entry in the ith row and jth column of the product is the dot product of the ith row of the first matrix with the jth column of the second matrix. Specifically:

$(AB)_{ij}=\sum _{s}A_{is}B_{sj}.\,$

For example, for

$U={\begin{pmatrix}u_{11}&u_{12}\\u_{21}&u_{22}\\\end{pmatrix}},\quad V={\begin{pmatrix}v_{11}&v_{12}\\v_{21}&v_{22}\\\end{pmatrix}},$

the product is

$UV={\begin{pmatrix}u_{11}v_{11}+u_{12}v_{21}&u_{11}v_{12}+u_{12}v_{22}\\u_{21}v_{11}+u_{22}v_{21}&u_{21}v_{12}+u_{22}v_{22}\\\end{pmatrix}}.$

Since quaternionic multiplication is noncommutative, care must be taken to preserve the order of the factors when computing the product of matrices.

The identity for this multiplication is, as expected, the diagonal matrix I = diag(1, 1, ... , 1). Multiplication follows the usual laws of associativity and distributivity. The trace of a matrix is defined as the sum of the diagonal elements, but in general

$\operatorname {trace} (AB)\neq \operatorname {trace} (BA).$

References

• Tapp, Kristopher (2005). Matrix groups for undergraduates. AMS Bookstore. ISBN 0821837850.