Clifford Algebraic Rotor Embeddings : Maybe embeddings should start to CARE

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Sriram, Sameeksha, Paliwal, Ayush, Ecker, Alexander S., van de Geijn, Chase
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Sriram, Sameeksha
Paliwal, Ayush
Ecker, Alexander S.
van de Geijn, Chase
author_facet Sriram, Sameeksha
Paliwal, Ayush
Ecker, Alexander S.
van de Geijn, Chase
contents Rotary Positional Embeddings (RoPE) have demonstrated exceptional performance as a positional encoding method, consistently outperforming their baselines. While recent work has sought to extend RoPE to higher-dimensional inputs, many such extensions are non-commutative, thereby forfeiting RoPE's shift-equivariance property. Spherical RoPE is one such non-commutative variant, motivated by the idea of rotating embedding vectors on spheres rather than circles. However, spherical rotations are inherently non-commutative, making the choice of rotation sequence ambiguous. In this work, we explore a quaternion-based approach -- Quaternion Rotary Embeddings (QuatRo) -- in place of Euler angles, leveraging quaternions' ability to represent 3D rotations to parameterize the axes of rotation. We show Mixed RoPE and Spherical RoPE to be special cases of QuatRo. Further, we propose a generalization of QuatRo to Clifford Algebraic Rotary Embeddings (CARE) using geometric algebra. Viewing quaternions as the even subalgebra of Cl(3,0,0), we extend the notion of rotary embeddings from quaternions to Clifford rotors acting on multivectors. This formulation enables two key generalizations: (1) extending rotary embeddings to arbitrary dimensions, and (2) encoding positional information in multivectors of multiple grades, not just vectors. We present preliminary experiments comparing spherical, quaternion, and Clifford-based rotary embeddings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_11665
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Clifford Algebraic Rotor Embeddings : Maybe embeddings should start to CARE
Sriram, Sameeksha
Paliwal, Ayush
Ecker, Alexander S.
van de Geijn, Chase
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Rotary Positional Embeddings (RoPE) have demonstrated exceptional performance as a positional encoding method, consistently outperforming their baselines. While recent work has sought to extend RoPE to higher-dimensional inputs, many such extensions are non-commutative, thereby forfeiting RoPE's shift-equivariance property. Spherical RoPE is one such non-commutative variant, motivated by the idea of rotating embedding vectors on spheres rather than circles. However, spherical rotations are inherently non-commutative, making the choice of rotation sequence ambiguous. In this work, we explore a quaternion-based approach -- Quaternion Rotary Embeddings (QuatRo) -- in place of Euler angles, leveraging quaternions' ability to represent 3D rotations to parameterize the axes of rotation. We show Mixed RoPE and Spherical RoPE to be special cases of QuatRo. Further, we propose a generalization of QuatRo to Clifford Algebraic Rotary Embeddings (CARE) using geometric algebra. Viewing quaternions as the even subalgebra of Cl(3,0,0), we extend the notion of rotary embeddings from quaternions to Clifford rotors acting on multivectors. This formulation enables two key generalizations: (1) extending rotary embeddings to arbitrary dimensions, and (2) encoding positional information in multivectors of multiple grades, not just vectors. We present preliminary experiments comparing spherical, quaternion, and Clifford-based rotary embeddings.
title Clifford Algebraic Rotor Embeddings : Maybe embeddings should start to CARE
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.11665