Minkowski space is a 4 dimensional real vector space with a non-degenerate pseudo-metric of signature .

More precisely, with a metric is a Minkowski space iff:

• is a 4 dimensional real vector space
• is a symmetric 2-covariant tensor (defines a quadratic form )
• is non-degenerate (i.e. )
• the diagonalization of contains one negative and three positive diagonal entries ¹.

Footnotes

... entries¹

this convention is sometimes reversed depending on notation