Quaternionic differential operators

Motivated by a quaternionic formulation of quantum mechanics, we discuss quaternionic and complex linear differential equations. We touch only a few aspects of the mathematical theory, namely the resolution of the second order differential equations with constant coefficients. We overcome the problems coming out from the loss of the fundamental theorem of the algebra for quaternions and propose a practical method to solve quaternionic and complex linear second order differential equations with constant coefficients. The resolution of the complex linear Schrodinger equation, in presence of quaternionic potentials, represents an interesting application of the mathematical material discussed in this paper.Comment: 25 pages, AMS-Te

Quaternions and Special Relativity

We reformulate Special Relativity by a quaternionic algebra on reals. Using {\em real linear quaternions}, we show that previous difficulties, concerning the appropriate transformations on the $3+1$ space-time, may be overcome. This implies that a complexified quaternionic version of Special Relativity is a choice and not a necessity.Comment: 17 pages, latex, no figure

Solvability of the cohomological equation for regular vector fields on the plane

We consider planar vector field without zeroes X and study the image of the associated Lie derivative operator LX acting on the space of smooth functions. We show that the cokernel of LX is infinite-dimensional as soon as X is not topologically conjugate to a constant vector field and that, if the topology of the integral trajectories of X is ``simple enough'' (e.g. if X is polynomial) then X is transversal to a Hamiltonian foliation. We use this fact to find a large explicit subalgebra of the image of LX and to build an embedding of R^2 into R^4 which rectifies X. Finally we use this embedding to characterize the functions in the image of LX.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure