Saturday, 27 September 2014

homework and exercises - Variation of Maxwell action with respect to the vierbein - Einstein-Cartan Theory



I'm using the reference "Differential Geometry, Gauge Theories and Gravity" by M. Göckeler and T. Schücker and I am having trouble to vary correctly the lagrangian


LM=12g2FF


with respect to the vierbein ea in order to find the Energy-momentum of the Maxwell action.


By doing ee+f in the lagragian above I find L[e+f]ML[e]M=1g2fc(14FabϵabcdedF+12Fcbeb|eF).


However, the right answer, present in the foregoing reference is


L[e+f]ML[e]M=1g2fc(14FabϵabcdedF12Fcbeb|eF).


(the only difference is the minus sign in the expression inside the brackets)


I worked a lot, but couldn't identify my mistake. So, does anyone know anything that is not trivial in the treatment with the forms in this case?


(In this case the signature used is lorentzian)


The whole calculation that I did was the following:



Since


LM[e]=12g2FF=12g2[12Fabeaeb(14Fαβϵαβcdeced)]=116g2(FabFαβϵαβcdeaebeced)


Then, by doing ee+f, and neglecting terms quadratic in f, we are lead to


LM[e+f]LM[e]=116g2FabFαβϵαβcd(faebeced+eafbeced+eaebfced+eaebecfd)=116g2FabFαβϵαβcd(2faebeced+2eaebfced)=18g2FabFαβϵαβcd(faebeced+eaebfced)=12g2(14FabFαβϵαβcdfaebeced+14FabFαβϵαβcdeaebfced)=12g2[fa(14FabFαβϵαβcd)ebeced+fc(14FabFαβϵαβcd)eaebed]=12g2[fa(14FabFαβϵαβcd)ebeced+fa(14FcbFαβϵαβad)ecebed]


And then, we have LM[e+f]LM[e]=12g2fa[(14FabFαβϵαβcd)ebeced+(14FcbFαβϵαβad)ecebed]=12g2fa[Fabeb|eF+(12Fαβϵαβad)Fed]=12g2fa[Fabeb|eF+(12Fαβϵαβad)edF]


Relabeling the indices, we finally have


LM[e+f]LM[e]=1g2fc[12Fcbeb|eF+(14Fabϵabcd)edF]=1g2fc[(14Fabϵabcd)edF+12Fcbeb|eF]


This is not in accordance with the reference due to the plus sign (it should be a minus) and, again, I could not identify where I have done something wrong.



Answer



I understand the notation in the book this way eaeb|eFeaebF=F(eaeb)=(eaeb)F.

Now in the more accurate definition of Hodge dual (in the proof from definition there is a step of flipping the indices for more symmetric looking result, but we not flip them here, at first) we have (faeb)=12ϵabcdfced.
In the case of (ee), there are no problems for flipping the indices 12ϵabcdeced=12ϵabcdeced.
But in the case of (fe) we have (faeb)=12ϵabcdfced=12ϵabefηceηfdfced=12ϵabefηcefcef=12ϵabeffeef.
This because e obeys the transformation laws eaea+faeaeafaηabfa=fb.
With faeb|eF=(faeb)F=12ϵabcdfcedF
we can obtained the same result as shown in the reference.



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