Quaternionic differential operators

Abstract

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 the presence of quaternionic potentials, represents an interesting application of the mathematical material discussed in this paper. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.4252236226