Wednesday, 30 December 2015

differential geometry - Hodge star operator on curvature?



I've a question regarding the Hodge star operator. I'm completely new to the notion of exterior derivatives and wedge products. I had to teach it to myself over the past couple of days, so I hope my question isn't trivial.


I've found the following formulas on the internet, which seem to match the definitions of the two books (Carroll and Baez & Muniain) that I own. For a general p-form on a n-dimensional manifold:


v=1p!vi1ipdxi1dxip


the Hodge operator is defined to act on the basis of the p-form as follows:


(dxi1dxip)=1q!˜εi1,,ipj1,,jqdxj1dxjq


where q=np and ˜ε is the Levi-Civita tensor. Up until here everything is fine, I managed to do some exercises and get the right answers. However, actually trying to calculate the curvature does cause some problems with me.


To give a bit of background. I'm working with a curvature in a Yang-Mills theory in spherical coordinates (r,θ,φ). Using gauge transformation, I've gotten rid of time-dependence, r dependence and θ dependence. Therefore, the curvature is given by:


F=θAφdθdφ


Applying the Hodge operator according to the formula above gives:


(dθdφ)=1(32)!˜εθφrdr=dr



such that:


F=(θAφ)dr


However, three different sources give a different formula. Specifically they give:


F=(θAφ)1r2sinθdr


It is not clear to me where they get this from. Something is being mentioned about the fact that the natural volume form is gdrdφdθ with g=r2sinθ, which I agree with. However, I do not understand why that term is incorporated in the Hodge operator.


Boaz and Muniain define the Hodge operator as:


ωμ=ω,μvol


But I don't see how that formula is applicable to calculating the Hodge operator on the curvature. Could anybody tell me where I am going wrong or provide me a source where they explain this?



Answer



It seems the resolution to OP's question lies in the difference between





  1. the Levi-Civita symbol, which is not a tensor and whose values are only 0 and ±1; and




  2. the Levi-Civita tensor, whose definition differs from the Levi-Civita symbol by a factor of |det.




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