What is the Wedge Product in Theoretical Physics?

[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 couldn`t catch it at all, cause I`m doing in the first semester now.

Does anyone know where I could find it well explained?

Thanks in advance! :)

 

[CompuChip]

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

 

[Marin]

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

 

[TheIsingGuy]

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 couldn`t catch it at all, cause I`m doing in the first semester now.

Does anyone know where I could find it well explained?

Thanks in advance! :)

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.

 

[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...

 

[maze]

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.

wait what? Is the meaning of wedge product different in melinov analysis as compared to geometry? ... This certainly isn't the meaning in geometry.