Re: [Phys-l] math notation question

[Larry Smith <larry.smith@snow.edu>]

At 7:32 PM -0500 12/8/06, John Denker wrote:
> My opinions and recommendations:
>
> a) When writing a paper, or writing in my notebooks, I use \nabla^2 in
> all cases, in two, three, four, or however-many dimensions.
>
> I see no reason to change symbology when switching from three dimensions
> to four.  IMHO if you do things right, the same concepts and the same
> symbology should work just fine in all dimensions from two on up.  This
> is a sufficient reason for deprecating the \box form of the d'Alembertian.

I agree with your general principle.  But there is a difference between
Euclidean 4-space and hyperbolic Minkowski 4-space where the sign is not
the same on all terms--at least that seems to be the justification at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Alembert_operator.

Larry