Hello, On Sun, Jun 05, 2011 at 05:55:11AM +0100, Vladimir V. Kisil wrote:
RK> From a physicists point of view, I thought that it doesn't make RK> sense to construct a clifford object with an idx instead of a RK> varidx.
There are several mathematical frameworks leading to Clifford algebras. Most elementary one is a free algebra with n generators factorised by an ideal of the quadratic (anticommuting) relations. From that perspective generators of the Clifford algebra are not required to be even indexed objects at all. You may call them simply a, b, c,... as long as you able to make manipulations like ab=-ba, a^2=-1, etc.
RK> If someone with more insight could shed a light on this I could RK> finish my recent quest to make GiNaC pass its test suite even RK> when compiled with -DDO_GINAC_ASSERT. That would be great.
However, I do not see a practical obstacle to change the GiNaC code to permit varidx only as indices in the clifford class.
I don't think this artificial restrictions is a good idea. Why don't we remove that bogus assertion instead? Best regards, Alexei