When Do Geometric Algebra Layers Beat Scalarization? A Controlled Study on SO(3)-Equivariant Vector Laws

arXiv:2607.06634v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Compact networks built from Clifford algebra Cl(3,0) primitives are exactly SO(3)-equivariant and learn synthetic 3D vector laws from few samples. We ask whether the geometric algebra structure itself contributes anything beyond exact equivariance. We compare against a minimal scalarization baseline: invariant dot products fed to a small MLP that outputs coefficients on the equivariant basis {v_i, v_i x v_j}, which is also exactly equivariant. On s...