PHY701

Mathematical Methods

Lecture 03

Vector analysis (part 1)

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I assume that all of you are familiar with the notion of vectors. Nonetheless,
for the sake of completeness, I am going to start with the basic definitions.

As you know, in physics, there are scalar and vector quantities. The former
are completely determined by their magnitudes (for example, mass, time,
energy, etc.) while the latter in addition to the magnitude also have certain
direction (for example, velocity, force, electric field, etc.).

More formally, we can say that scalars remain unchanged (invariant)

invariant under
the rotation of the coordinate system, while vectors transform in a certain way
under such a rotation.

Vectors are depicted as arrow-headed lines whose length is proportional to

their magnitudes. In formulae, vectors are denoted either with boldface letters

or with an arrow above the symbol To avoid possible confusion, I

will use only the arrow notation because when formulae are projected onto the
screen it is easy to mix up boldfaced and ordinary symbols.

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More formally: they must belong to the same vector space
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The addition of two vectors can be done graphically either using the triangle or
parallelogram rule.

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The subtraction is equivalent to the addition of
the opposite vector

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Analytic representation of vectors

Graphical manipulations with vectors are very helpful in intuitive understanding of

the problem, but very seldom can give you an exact answer.

More powerful and systematic is the analytic approach, in which vectors are
decomposed in components and all the operations are done in terms of them.

The simplest and most often used is the Cartesian representation of vectors. In
this representation, a vector is decomposed in its projections on the orthogonal
axes.

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Linear independence of vectors

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The simplest example is a pair of any two non-parallel vectors:

It is not difficult to see

that any third vector
belonging to the same
plane can be
expressed as a linear
combination of these
two

Therefore the maximum number of linearly independent vectors on a plane is two.

Similarly, in the three-dimensional space you cannot have more than three linearly
independent vectors.
In general:

The maximum number of linearly independent vectors is always equal to the

dimension of the space.

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Basis

The advantage of using orthonormal basis becomes obvious when we want to

express the magnitude of a vector in terms of its components. Thanks to the
orthogonality of the basis vectors, we can use the Pythagoras’ theorem and
immediately find that

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Multiplication of
vectors
So far, we have introduced vector operations of summation, subtraction, and
multiplication by a scalar number. Now, we want to multiply vector by a vector.
There are two possible outcomes of such an operation: a scalar and another
vector. Accordingly, we can define the scalar product and vector
product of two vectors.
Scalar product

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Vector product

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Area of the
parallelogram

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Analytic representation of vector product

Taking into account the fact that the cross-product of a

vector with itself is zero, we obtain

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Scalar triple product

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Vector triple product

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 SUMMARY

Scalar product

Vector product

Scalar triple product

Vector triple product

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Reciprocal vectors

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As we see, there are 9 equations in the above
definition. So, if we are given a set of (non-
coplanar) vectors
then using these equations, we can (in principle)
find 9 components of their reciprocal vectors

It is easy to check that the following three vectors

obey all 9 equations

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When dealing with crystals, in most
cases we have to use three non-
orthogonal and non-unit vectors

as the basis. This is because the

elementary cell of a crystal is not
always cubic. The basis vectors are
equal to the lattice constants and
directed along the elementary cell
edges. 24
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Rotation of the coordinate system

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 Vector calculus So far we dealt with fixed vectors. However in physics we deal with various
kinds of functions involving vectors

function example For all such functions,

Vector function of a scalar Velocity we can define various
operations of differentiation
Scalar function of a vector Electric potential and integration. This is the
subject of the so called
Vector function of a vector Electric field
vector calculus.

Differentiation of a vector depending on a scalar

We can define the derivative of this

vector with respect to its scalar
argument in two ways: either via the
derivatives of its Cartesian
components or directly as the limit 33
 Apparently, these two definitions are
equivalent, but the second one is more
general because it does not depend on
the choice of the coordinate system.

If we use some other (non-Cartesian)

system, the expression of the derivative in
terms of the corresponding vector
components becomes more complicated.
In order to understand why, let us consider
a more simple case, namely, a two-
dimensional vector represented by the
Cartesian and polar coordinates. The unit
vectors and have the same
directions everywhere. This is not the case
for the unit vectors and of the
polar coordinate system.

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Integration
of a vector
depending
on a scalar

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Curves in 3-dimensional space

When a particle continuously moves in

the 3D-space its trajectory is a curve
which we are going to consider now.
Mathematically, such a curve can be
specified in several different ways
(which actually are equivalent to each
other).
The most obvious way is to specify a vector
function which points from the origin of
the coordinate system to the point where
the particle is at the instant t. Formally, we
have a vector function of a scalar
argument (time)

Actually, in this way we give three

parametric equations of the curve

Note that instead of t, we use here the parameter u.

This is done to emphasize that 3D-curves are not
necessarily trajectories of moving particles. 39
Very often, as the parameter it is used the
length s of the curve, counted from a fixed
point. So, the curve is given as vector
function

g(

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Yet another way of specifying a curve is by
giving two surfaces whose intersection is
this curve. The surfaces are given by the
equations

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Vector functions depending on several arguments

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Surfaces in 3-dimensional space

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If we are given such a description, , we can easily come back to
the parametric description by simply considering x and y as the parameters

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Vector which is normal to the
tangent plane, can be obtained
by the cross-product of two
vectors belonging to that plane

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