Functional equations for vector products and quaternions

Abstract

In our paper we find all functions ${f : \mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {R}^{3} \rightarrow \mathbb {H}}$ and ${g : \mathbb {R}^{3} \rightarrow \mathbb {H}}$ satisfying ${f (r, {\bf v}) f (s, {\bf w}) = -\langle{\bf v},{\bf w}\rangle + f (rs, s{\bf v} + r{\bf w} + {\bf v} \times {\bf w})}$ ${(r, s \in \mathbb {R}, {\bf v},{\bf w} \in \mathbb {R}^{3})}$ , and ${g({\bf v})g({\bf w}) = -\langle{\bf v}, {\bf w}\rangle + g({\bf v} \times {\bf w})}$ $({{\bf v},{\bf w} \in \mathbb {R}^{3}})$ . These functional equations were motivated by the well-known identities for vector products and quaternions, which can be obtained from the solutions f (r, (v ₁, v ₂, v ₃)) = r + v ₁ i + v ₂ j + v ₃ k and g((v ₁ ,v ₂, v ₃)) = v ₁ i + v ₂ j + v ₃ k.