Sunday, 23 April 2017

conventions - Covariant and contravariant permutation tensor


I have been reading up on the permutation tensor, and have come across the following expression (in 'Generalized Calculus with Applications to Matter and Forces' by L.M.B.C Campos page 709): ei1,,in=ei1,,in={0if repeated indices1if (i1,,in) is an even permutation1if (i1,,in) is an odd permutation

However when I try and prove that: ei1,,in=ei1,,in
I instead get: ei1,,in=det(g)ei1,,in
why is there a difference between my result and that given above? Is it to do with the way ei1,,in has been defined?


My working ei1,,in=σgiσ(1)i1giσ(n)ineiσ(1)iσ(n)

where the summation is over all permutations, σ, of (1,,n) ei1...in=ei1...inσsgn(σ)giσ(1)i1giσ(n)in=det(g)ei1,,in



Answer



The symbol defined as ei1i2in=ei1i2in={0if repeated indices1if even permutation1if odd permutation

is indeed not a tensor. It is called the Levi-Civita symbol (and is a pseudo-tensor density), but we can turn it into a pseudo-tensor, by defining the Levi-Civita tensor ϵi1i2in|det(g)|ei1i2in,ϵi1i2in1|det(g)|ei1i2in.
Since you have already found how the symbol reacts to index lowering, you can immediately verify that gi1j1gi2j2ginjnϵj1j2jn=(1)sϵi1i2in,
where s is the number of negatives in the metric signature. The (1)s-factor is why we call it a pseudo-tensor. Note that the definition carries two consequences: ϵi1i2inϵj1j2jn=ei1i2inej1j2jn,
and crucially, under some frame transformation Λk we have Λj1i1Λj2i2Λjninϵj1j2jn=sgn(Λ)|det(Λ2g)|ei1i2in=sgn(Λ)˜ϵi1i2in,
where ˜ϵi1i2in is the Levi-Civita tensor of the transformed frame, and sgn(Λ) is the sign of the determinant. We can also consider this the reason to call it a pseudo-tensor, since both the (1)s factor and the sgn(Λ) factor are consequences of the same property. In particular, note that (1)s=sgn(g).


A finaly word of caution: in the literature it is common to use ϵ or ε for either the symbol or the tensor, and sometimes the other for the other, and sometimes without clarifying which one is used. In such cases it can typically be inferred from the context.


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