Quaternionic octahedral fields: SU(2) parameterization of 3D frames

Abstract: 3D frame fields are auxiliary for hexahedral mesh generation. There mainly exist three ways to represent 3D frames: combination of rotations, spherical harmonics and fourth order tensor. We propose here a representation carried out by the special unitary group. The article strongly relies on \cite{du1964homographies}. We first describe the rotations with quaternions, \cite[\S 13-15]{du1964homographies}. We define and show the isomorphism between unit quaternions and the special unitary group, \cite[\S 16]{du1964homographies}. The frame field space is identified as the quotient group of rotations by the octahedral group, \cite[\S 20]{du1964homographies}. The invariant forms of the vierer, tetrahedral and octahedral groups are successively built, without using homographies \cite[\S 39]{du1964homographies}. Modifying the definition of the isomorphism between unit quaternions and the special unitary group allows to use the invariant forms of the octahedral group as a unique parameterization of the orientation of 3D frames. The parameterization consists in three complex values, corresponding to a coordinate of a variety which is embedded in a three complex valued dimensional space. The underlined variety is the model surface of the octahedral group, which can be expressed with an implicit equation. We prove that from a coordinate of the surface, we may identify all the quaternions giving the corresponding 3D frames. We show that the euclidean distance between two coordinates does not correspond to the actual distance of the corresponding 3D frames. We derive the expression of three components of a coordinate in the case of frames sharing an even direction. We then derive a way to ensure that a coordinate corresponds to the special unitary group. Finally, the attempted numerical schemes to compute frame fields are given.