[Math] Apply a fraction of a rotation matrix without extracting axis-angle

linear algebramatricesrotations

In 3D, you can take any pure rotation matrix and find an axis-angle representation of the same transformation (although not necessarily unique). From that representation, you could create a new matrix that represents a fractional part of the original transformation by taking a fraction of the original angle, keeping the original axis, and creating a new matrix.

In high-dimensional space, axis-angle doesn't make sense since it seems that rotation actually happens within a plane and not necessarily around an axis per se. Is it possible to find a rotation matrix that rotates a space by some fraction of the angle by which some other rotation matrix rotates without first finding the plane and angle of rotation?

Best Answer

Essentially you are asking to raise the rotation matrix to an arbitrary power. To do this you can use the fact that $X^a=\exp(a \log X)$ for any matrix $X$. To compute the matrix logarithm we use

$$\log X = \log (I - (I-X)) = -\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{(I-X)^n}{n}$$

Now if you can diagonalize $I-X$ (perhaps there is a proof that this is always possible for $X$ a rotation matrix?) to give $I-X=SDS^{-1}$ then you have

$$\log X = -S \left(\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{D^n}{n}\right) S^{-1}$$

which is fast to compute (again you'd need a proof that this converges when $X$ is a rotation matrix). Now you compute the matrix exponential in the same way. Letting $\log X=\hat{S}\hat{D}\hat{S}^{-1}$ for $\hat{D}$ diagonal,

$$X^a = \exp(a\log X) = \hat{S} \left(\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{a^n \hat{D}^n}{n!}\right) \hat{S}^{-1}$$

which again is fast to compute.


Thinking off the top of my head now, it seems that since all rotations are in a plane, the eigenvalues of a rotation X in $\mathbb{R}^n$ must be $e^{\pm \mathrm{i}\theta}$ for some $\theta$ (once each) and $1$ ($n - 2$ times). Therefore the matrix $I-X$ has eigenvalues $1-e^{\pm\mathrm{i}\theta}$ and $0$ ($n - 2$ times), so its diagonalisation D has a particularly simple form.

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