Help with intuitively understanding why the space of bivectors from 4D Euclidean space is 6 dimensional

geometric-algebrasvector-spaces

The wedge product of two 4D Euclidean space vectors is of dimension 6. I can understand mathematically that the six basis vectors are linearly independent, from the math itself. But I fail to see this intuitively. My confusion is the following:

Each basis vector represents an oriented area inside 4D space, perpendicular to the two basis vectors used in the wedge product. We can add two of these areas and obtain another area. I understand that the orientation of the areas add in a different way that 4D vector do, but I cannot see how or in what way this can result in a vector space of area orientations that is 6 dimensional, rather than 4 dimensional. Is there an easy way to visualize why this is so? (or, did I state something wrong?)

Best Answer

A basis for space of bivectors consists of pairs of vectors from a basis for the the original space, and $$ \binom{4}{2} = 6. $$ We can list them explicitly: \begin{array}{cccc} v_1 \wedge v_2 & v_1 \wedge v_3 & v_1 \wedge v_4 \\ & v_2 \wedge v_3 & v_2 \wedge v_4 \\ & & v_3 \wedge v_4 \end{array} and see that there are $6$ of them.

Each of these $v_i \wedge v_j$ describes a plane $\Pi_{ij} = \operatorname{span}\{v_i, v_j\} \subset \mathbb{R}^4$, together with an orientation.

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