# Wedge product

1. Nov 1, 2008

### Marin

Hi all!

The prof for "theoretical methods in physics" mentioned last week the term "wedge product" but it all remained very unclear to me. I read about it in Wikipedia, but couldnt catch it at all, cause Im doing in the first semester now.

Does anyone know where I could find it well explained?

2. Nov 1, 2008

### CompuChip

In which context was it mentioned? Did it have to do with vectors? Or with tensors?

3. Nov 1, 2008

### Marin

it´s was given as a generalisation of the vector product

4. Nov 12, 2008

### TheIsingGuy

It's a dot product, but for functions rather than for vectors, it might help if you read upon melnikov analysis, a rather useful tool to analyse bifurcation boundaries on the parameter space, it involves the wedge product in its definition.

5. Nov 13, 2008

### mathwonk

read spivak, calculus on manifolds, i think chapter 4. it is a skew symmetric multiplication, used to make determinants more routinely computational. i.e. the determinant of a matrix is essentially the wedge product of its rows. the wedge product of two n vectors, is a vector with n choose 2 entries, namely the 2by2 submatrices of the corresponding 2 by n matrix,..etc....

the wedge product of three n vectors is: guess what? oh there is also a variational version, wherein one takes the wedge product of vector fields and covector fields, etc...

6. Nov 13, 2008

### maze

wait what? Is the meaning of wedge product different in melinov analysis as compared to geometry? ... This certainly isnt the meaning in geometry.