In mathematics and physics, a tensor field assigns a tensor to each point of a mathematical space (typically a Euclidean space or manifold). Tensor fields are used in differential geometry, algebraic geometry, general relativity, in the analysis of stress and strain in materials, and in numerous applications in the physical sciences. As a tensor is a generalization of a scalar (a pure number representing a value, for example speed) and a vector (a pure number plus a direction, like velocity), a tensor field is a generalization of a scalar field or vector field that assigns, respectively, a scalar or vector to each point of space. If a tensor A is defined on a vector fields set X(M) over a module M, we call A a tensor field on M. [1]
Many mathematical structures called "tensors" are also tensor fields. For example, the Riemann curvature tensor is a tensor field as it associates a tensor to each point of a Riemannian manifold, which is a topological space.
Let M be a manifold, for instance the Euclidean plane Rn.
Definition. A tensor field of type (p, q) is a section
where V is a vector bundle on M, V* is its dual and ⊗ is the tensor product of vector bundles.
Equivalently, it is a collection of elements Tx∈ Vx⊗p ⊗ (Vx*)⊗q for all points x ∈ M, arranging into a smooth map T : M → V⊗p ⊗ (V*)⊗q. Elements Tx are called tensors.
Often we take V = TM to be the tangent bundle of M.
Intuitively, a vector field is best visualized as an "arrow" attached to each point of a region, with variable length and direction. One example of a vector field on a curved space is a weather map showing horizontal wind velocity at each point of the Earth's surface.
Now consider more complicated fields. For example, if the manifold is Riemannian, then it has a metric field , such that given any two vectors Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): v,w at point Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): x, their inner product is Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle g_x(v, w)}. The field could be given in matrix form, but it depends on a choice of coordinates. It could instead be given as an ellipsoid of radius 1 at each point, which is coordinate-free. Applied to the Earth's surface, this is Tissot's indicatrix.
In general, we want to specify tensor fields in a coordinate-independent way: It should exist independently of latitude and longitude, or whatever particular "cartographic projection" we are using to introduce numerical coordinates.
Following Schouten (1951) and McConnell (1957), the concept of a tensor relies on a concept of a reference frame (or coordinate system), which may be fixed (relative to some background reference frame), but in general may be allowed to vary within some class of transformations of these coordinate systems. [2]
For example, coordinates belonging to the n-dimensional real coordinate space Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): \mathbb {R} ^{n} may be subjected to arbitrary affine transformations:
(with n-dimensional indices, summation implied). A covariant vector, or covector, is a system of functions that transforms under this affine transformation by the rule
The list of Cartesian coordinate basis vectors Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\mathbf e}_{k} transforms as a covector, since under the affine transformation Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle \mathbf e_k\mapsto A^i_k\mathbf e_i}. A contravariant vector is a system of functions Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle v^k} of the coordinates that, under such an affine transformation undergoes a transformation
This is precisely the requirement needed to ensure that the quantity Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle v^k\mathbf e_k} is an invariant object that does not depend on the coordinate system chosen. More generally, a tensor of valence (p,q) has p downstairs indices and q upstairs indices, with the transformation law being
The concept of a tensor field may be obtained by specializing the allowed coordinate transformations to be smooth (or differentiable, analytic, etc). A covector field is a function of the coordinates that transforms by the Jacobian of the transition functions (in the given class). Likewise, a contravariant vector field transforms by the inverse Jacobian.
A tensor bundle is a fiber bundle where the fiber is a tensor product of any number of copies of the tangent space and/or cotangent space of the base space, which is a manifold. As such, the fiber is a vector space and the tensor bundle is a special kind of vector bundle.
The vector bundle is a natural idea of "vector space depending continuously (or smoothly) on parameters" – the parameters being the points of a manifold M. For example, a vector space of one dimension depending on an angle could look like a Möbius strip or alternatively like a cylinder. Given a vector bundle V over M, the corresponding field concept is called a section of the bundle: for m varying over M, a choice of vector
where Vm is the vector space "at" m.
Since the tensor product concept is independent of any choice of basis, taking the tensor product of two vector bundles on M is routine. Starting with the tangent bundle (the bundle of tangent spaces) the whole apparatus explained at component-free treatment of tensors carries over in a routine way – again independently of coordinates, as mentioned in the introduction.
We therefore can give a definition of tensor field, namely as a section of some tensor bundle. (There are vector bundles that are not tensor bundles: the Möbius band for instance.) This is then guaranteed geometric content, since everything has been done in an intrinsic way. More precisely, a tensor field assigns to any given point of the manifold a tensor in the space
where V is the tangent space at that point and V∗ is the cotangent space. See also tangent bundle and cotangent bundle.
Given two tensor bundles E → M and F → M, a linear map A: Γ(E) → Γ(F) from the space of sections of E to sections of F can be considered itself as a tensor section of if and only if it satisfies A(fs) = fA(s), for each section s in Γ(E) and each smooth function f on M. Thus a tensor section is not only a linear map on the vector space of sections, but a C∞(M)-linear map on the module of sections. This property is used to check, for example, that even though the Lie derivative and covariant derivative are not tensors, the torsion and curvature tensors built from them are.
The notation for tensor fields can sometimes be confusingly similar to the notation for tensor spaces. Thus, the tangent bundle TM = T(M) might sometimes be written as
to emphasize that the tangent bundle is the range space of the (1,0) tensor fields (i.e., vector fields) on the manifold M. This should not be confused with the very similar looking notation
in the latter case, we just have one tensor space, whereas in the former, we have a tensor space defined for each point in the manifold M.
Curly (script) letters are sometimes used to denote the set of infinitely-differentiable tensor fields on M. Thus,
are the sections of the (m,n) tensor bundle on M that are infinitely-differentiable. A tensor field is an element of this set.
There is another more abstract (but often useful) way of characterizing tensor fields on a manifold M, which makes tensor fields into honest tensors (i.e. single multilinear mappings), though of a different type (although this is not usually why one often says "tensor" when one really means "tensor field"). First, we may consider the set of all smooth (C∞) vector fields on M, (see the section on notation above) as a single space — a module over the ring of smooth functions, C∞(M), by pointwise scalar multiplication. The notions of multilinearity and tensor products extend easily to the case of modules over any commutative ring.
As a motivating example, consider the space of smooth covector fields (1-forms), also a module over the smooth functions. These act on smooth vector fields to yield smooth functions by pointwise evaluation, namely, given a covector field ω and a vector field X, we define
Because of the pointwise nature of everything involved, the action of ω on X is a C∞(M)-linear map, that is,
for any p in M and smooth function f. Thus we can regard covector fields not just as sections of the cotangent bundle, but also linear mappings of vector fields into functions. By the double-dual construction, vector fields can similarly be expressed as mappings of covector fields into functions (namely, we could start "natively" with covector fields and work up from there).
In a complete parallel to the construction of ordinary single tensors (not tensor fields!) on M as multilinear maps on vectors and covectors, we can regard general (k,l) tensor fields on M as C∞(M)-multilinear maps defined on l copies of and k copies of into C∞(M).
Now, given any arbitrary mapping T from a product of k copies of and l copies of into C∞(M), it turns out that it arises from a tensor field on M if and only if it is multilinear over C∞(M). Thus this kind of multilinearity implicitly expresses the fact that we're really dealing with a pointwise-defined object, i.e. a tensor field, as opposed to a function which, even when evaluated at a single point, depends on all the values of vector fields and 1-forms simultaneously.
A frequent example application of this general rule is showing that the Levi-Civita connection, which is a mapping of smooth vector fields Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): (X,Y)\mapsto \nabla _{X}Y taking a pair of vector fields to a vector field, does not define a tensor field on M. This is because it is only R-linear in Y (in place of full C∞(M)-linearity, it satisfies the Leibniz rule,)). Nevertheless, it must be stressed that even though it is not a tensor field, it still qualifies as a geometric object with a component-free interpretation.
The curvature tensor is discussed in differential geometry and the stress–energy tensor is important in physics, and these two tensors are related by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
In electromagnetism, the electric and magnetic fields are combined into an electromagnetic tensor field.
It is worth noting that differential forms, used in defining integration on manifolds, are a type of tensor field.
In theoretical physics and other fields, differential equations posed in terms of tensor fields provide a very general way to express relationships that are both geometric in nature (guaranteed by the tensor nature) and conventionally linked to differential calculus. Even to formulate such equations requires a fresh notion, the covariant derivative. This handles the formulation of variation of a tensor field along a vector field. The original absolute differential calculus notion, which was later called tensor calculus , led to the isolation of the geometric concept of connection.
An extension of the tensor field idea incorporates an extra line bundle L on M. If W is the tensor product bundle of V with L, then W is a bundle of vector spaces of just the same dimension as V. This allows one to define the concept of tensor density, a 'twisted' type of tensor field. A tensor density is the special case where L is the bundle of densities on a manifold, namely the determinant bundle of the cotangent bundle. (To be strictly accurate, one should also apply the absolute value to the transition functions – this makes little difference for an orientable manifold.) For a more traditional explanation see the tensor density article.
One feature of the bundle of densities (again assuming orientability) L is that Ls is well-defined for real number values of s; this can be read from the transition functions, which take strictly positive real values. This means for example that we can take a half-density, the case where s = ½. In general we can take sections of W, the tensor product of V with Ls, and consider tensor density fields with weight s.
Half-densities are applied in areas such as defining integral operators on manifolds, and geometric quantization.
When M is a Euclidean space and all the fields are taken to be invariant by translations by the vectors of M, we get back to a situation where a tensor field is synonymous with a tensor 'sitting at the origin'. This does no great harm, and is often used in applications. As applied to tensor densities, it does make a difference. The bundle of densities cannot seriously be defined 'at a point'; and therefore a limitation of the contemporary mathematical treatment of tensors is that tensor densities are defined in a roundabout fashion.
As an advanced explanation of the tensor concept, one can interpret the chain rule in the multivariable case, as applied to coordinate changes, also as the requirement for self-consistent concepts of tensor giving rise to tensor fields.
Abstractly, we can identify the chain rule as a 1-cocycle. It gives the consistency required to define the tangent bundle in an intrinsic way. The other vector bundles of tensors have comparable cocycles, which come from applying functorial properties of tensor constructions to the chain rule itself; this is why they also are intrinsic (read, 'natural') concepts.
What is usually spoken of as the 'classical' approach to tensors tries to read this backwards – and is therefore a heuristic, post hoc approach rather than truly a foundational one. Implicit in defining tensors by how they transform under a coordinate change is the kind of self-consistency the cocycle expresses. The construction of tensor densities is a 'twisting' at the cocycle level. Geometers have not been in any doubt about the geometric nature of tensor quantities; this kind of descent argument justifies abstractly the whole theory.
The concept of a tensor field can be generalized by considering objects that transform differently. An object that transforms as an ordinary tensor field under coordinate transformations, except that it is also multiplied by the determinant of the Jacobian of the inverse coordinate transformation to the wth power, is called a tensor density with weight w. [3] Invariantly, in the language of multilinear algebra, one can think of tensor densities as multilinear maps taking their values in a density bundle such as the (1-dimensional) space of n-forms (where n is the dimension of the space), as opposed to taking their values in just R. Higher "weights" then just correspond to taking additional tensor products with this space in the range.
A special case are the scalar densities. Scalar 1-densities are especially important because it makes sense to define their integral over a manifold. They appear, for instance, in the Einstein–Hilbert action in general relativity. The most common example of a scalar 1-density is the volume element, which in the presence of a metric tensor g is the square root of its determinant in coordinates, denoted . The metric tensor is a covariant tensor of order 2, and so its determinant scales by the square of the coordinate transition:
which is the transformation law for a scalar density of weight +2.
More generally, any tensor density is the product of an ordinary tensor with a scalar density of the appropriate weight. In the language of vector bundles, the determinant bundle of the tangent bundle is a line bundle that can be used to 'twist' other bundles w times. While locally the more general transformation law can indeed be used to recognise these tensors, there is a global question that arises, reflecting that in the transformation law one may write either the Jacobian determinant, or its absolute value. Non-integral powers of the (positive) transition functions of the bundle of densities make sense, so that the weight of a density, in that sense, is not restricted to integer values. Restricting to changes of coordinates with positive Jacobian determinant is possible on orientable manifolds, because there is a consistent global way to eliminate the minus signs; but otherwise the line bundle of densities and the line bundle of n-forms are distinct. For more on the intrinsic meaning, see density on a manifold.
In differential geometry, the cotangent space is a vector space associated with a point on a smooth manifold ; one can define a cotangent space for every point on a smooth manifold. Typically, the cotangent space, is defined as the dual space of the tangent space at , , although there are more direct definitions. The elements of the cotangent space are called cotangent vectors or tangent covectors.
In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field whose value at a point is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradient of a function is non-zero at a point , the direction of the gradient is the direction in which the function increases most quickly from , and the magnitude of the gradient is the rate of increase in that direction, the greatest absolute directional derivative. Further, a point where the gradient is the zero vector is known as a stationary point. The gradient thus plays a fundamental role in optimization theory, where it is used to maximize a function by gradient ascent. In coordinate-free terms, the gradient of a function may be defined by:
In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors, including scalars and vectors, dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product. Tensors are defined independent of any basis, although they are often referred to by their components in a basis related to a particular coordinate system; those components form an array, which can be thought of as a high-dimensional matrix.
In mathematics and physics, a vector space is a set whose elements, often called vectors, may be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers called scalars. Scalars are often real numbers, but can be complex numbers or, more generally, elements of any field. The operations of vector addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy certain requirements, called vector axioms. The terms real vector space and complex vector space are often used to specify the nature of the scalars: real coordinate space or complex coordinate space.
In vector calculus and physics, a vector field is an assignment of a vector to each point in a space, most commonly Euclidean space . A vector field on a plane can be visualized as a collection of arrows with given magnitudes and directions, each attached to a point on the plane. Vector fields are often used to model, for example, the speed and direction of a moving fluid throughout three dimensional space, such as the wind, or the strength and direction of some force, such as the magnetic or gravitational force, as it changes from one point to another point.
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a metric tensor is an additional structure on a manifold M that allows defining distances and angles, just as the inner product on a Euclidean space allows defining distances and angles there. More precisely, a metric tensor at a point p of M is a bilinear form defined on the tangent space at p, and a metric tensor on M consists of a metric tensor at each point p of M that varies smoothly with p.
In physics, especially in multilinear algebra and tensor analysis, covariance and contravariance describe how the quantitative description of certain geometric or physical entities changes with a change of basis. In modern mathematical notation, the role is sometimes swapped.
In differential geometry, the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold is a manifold which assembles all the tangent vectors in . As a set, it is given by the disjoint union of the tangent spaces of . That is,
In mathematics, differential forms provide a unified approach to define integrands over curves, surfaces, solids, and higher-dimensional manifolds. The modern notion of differential forms was pioneered by Élie Cartan. It has many applications, especially in geometry, topology and physics.
In mathematics, especially differential geometry, the cotangent bundle of a smooth manifold is the vector bundle of all the cotangent spaces at every point in the manifold. It may be described also as the dual bundle to the tangent bundle. This may be generalized to categories with more structure than smooth manifolds, such as complex manifolds, or algebraic varieties or schemes. In the smooth case, any Riemannian metric or symplectic form gives an isomorphism between the cotangent bundle and the tangent bundle, but they are not in general isomorphic in other categories.
In mathematics, the modern component-free approach to the theory of a tensor views a tensor as an abstract object, expressing some definite type of multilinear concept. Their properties can be derived from their definitions, as linear maps or more generally; and the rules for manipulations of tensors arise as an extension of linear algebra to multilinear algebra.
In differential geometry, the Lie derivative, named after Sophus Lie by Władysław Ślebodziński, evaluates the change of a tensor field, along the flow defined by another vector field. This change is coordinate invariant and therefore the Lie derivative is defined on any differentiable manifold.
In mathematics, and especially differential geometry and gauge theory, a connection on a fiber bundle is a device that defines a notion of parallel transport on the bundle; that is, a way to "connect" or identify fibers over nearby points. The most common case is that of a linear connection on a vector bundle, for which the notion of parallel transport must be linear. A linear connection is equivalently specified by a covariant derivative, an operator that differentiates sections of the bundle along tangent directions in the base manifold, in such a way that parallel sections have derivative zero. Linear connections generalize, to arbitrary vector bundles, the Levi-Civita connection on the tangent bundle of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold, which gives a standard way to differentiate vector fields. Nonlinear connections generalize this concept to bundles whose fibers are not necessarily linear.
In mathematics, the covariant derivative is a way of specifying a derivative along tangent vectors of a manifold. Alternatively, the covariant derivative is a way of introducing and working with a connection on a manifold by means of a differential operator, to be contrasted with the approach given by a principal connection on the frame bundle – see affine connection. In the special case of a manifold isometrically embedded into a higher-dimensional Euclidean space, the covariant derivative can be viewed as the orthogonal projection of the Euclidean directional derivative onto the manifold's tangent space. In this case the Euclidean derivative is broken into two parts, the extrinsic normal component and the intrinsic covariant derivative component.
Let be a smooth map between smooth manifolds and . Then there is an associated linear map from the space of 1-forms on to the space of 1-forms on . This linear map is known as the pullback, and is frequently denoted by . More generally, any covariant tensor field – in particular any differential form – on may be pulled back to using .
In abstract algebra and multilinear algebra, a multilinear form on a vector space over a field is a map
In mathematics, a differentiable manifold is a type of manifold that is locally similar enough to a vector space to allow one to apply calculus. Any manifold can be described by a collection of charts (atlas). One may then apply ideas from calculus while working within the individual charts, since each chart lies within a vector space to which the usual rules of calculus apply. If the charts are suitably compatible, then computations done in one chart are valid in any other differentiable chart.
In mathematics—more specifically, in differential geometry—the musical isomorphism is an isomorphism between the tangent bundle and the cotangent bundle of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold induced by its metric tensor. There are similar isomorphisms on symplectic manifolds. The term musical refers to the use of the symbols (flat) and (sharp).
In mathematics, a metric connection is a connection in a vector bundle E equipped with a bundle metric; that is, a metric for which the inner product of any two vectors will remain the same when those vectors are parallel transported along any curve. This is equivalent to:
The tetrad formalism is an approach to general relativity that generalizes the choice of basis for the tangent bundle from a coordinate basis to the less restrictive choice of a local basis, i.e. a locally defined set of four linearly independent vector fields called a tetrad or vierbein. It is a special case of the more general idea of a vielbein formalism, which is set in (pseudo-)Riemannian geometry. This article as currently written makes frequent mention of general relativity; however, almost everything it says is equally applicable to (pseudo-)Riemannian manifolds in general, and even to spin manifolds. Most statements hold simply by substituting arbitrary for . In German, "vier" translates to "four", and "viel" to "many".
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