On a continuation of quaternionic and octonionic logarithm along curves and the winding number

Abstract

This paper focuses on the problem of finding a continuous extension of the hypercomplex logarithm along a path. While a branch of the complex logarithm can be defined in a small open neighbourhood of a strictly negative real point, no continuous branch of the hypercomplex logarithm can be defined in any open set $A\subset \mathbb K\setminus \{0\}$ which contains a strictly negative real point $x_0$ (here $\mathbb K$ represents the algebra of quaternions or octonions). To overcome these difficulties, we introduced the logarithmic manifold $\mathscr E_\mathbb K^+$ and then showed that if $q\in\mathbb K,\ q=x+Iy$ then $E(x+Iy) %= (\exp (x + Iy), Iy) = (\exp x \cos y + I\exp x \sin y, Iy)$ is an immersion and a diffeomorphism between $\mathbb K$ and $\mathscr E_\mathbb K^+$. In this paper, we consider lifts of paths in $\mathbb K\setminus\{0\}$ to the logarithmic manifold $\mathscr{E}^+_\mathbb K$; even though $\mathbb K \setminus \{0\}$ is simply connected, in general, given a path in $\mathbb K \setminus \{0\}$, the existence of a lift of this path to $\mathscr{E}^+_\mathbb K$ is not guaranteed. There is an obvious equivalence between the problem of lifting a path in $\mathbb K \setminus \{0\}$ and the one of finding a continuation of the hypercomplex logarithm $\log_{\mathbb K}$ along this path.