Christoffel symbols
A vector field in can be seen as a differentiable () map.
Or as a section where is the ’s trivial tangent bundle obeying with being the tangent space
at .
Another viewpoint about tangent vectors is that they are also linear operators called derivations and they actover scalars via .
Let be one of them and its Jacobian matrix evaluated at the point .Then, for any other vector field ,
measures how varies in the direction at .
We have , where in components.Also, it is obvious that defines a new vector field in which is symbolized as
We can be consider it as a bilinear map
Further, it is easy to see that for any scalar
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Here we have abbreviated (as usual) and the operation is the Lie bracket
.
This is called the standard connection of .
Now, let be a n-dimensional differentiable manifold and let be its tangent bundle.The set of differentiable sections is a differentiable Lie algebra which is endowed with a differentiable inner product via
in each .
It is possible construct a bilinear operator
compatible with and which satisfies the following properties
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
The Fundamental Theorem of Riemannian Geometry establishes that this exists and it is unique,and it is called the Levi-Civita connection for the metric on .
Now, if one uses a coordinated patch in one has a set of n-coordinated vector fields meaning being the coordinate functions.These are also dubbed holonomic derivations.
So it makes sense to speak about the derivatives and since the are tangent
which generate at a point , then is also tangent, so there are numbers (functions if one varies position) which entersin the relation
These coefficients are called Christoffel symbols
and an easy calculation shows that
where , are the entries of the matrix and.
Routinely one can check that under a change of coordinates these functions transform as
here we have used Einstein’s sum convention (-sums) and the term
shows that the are not tensors.
For a proof please see the last part in:http://planetmath.org/?op=getobj&from=collab&id=64http://planetmath.org/?op=getobj&from=collab&id=64
Connection with base vectors.
Let us assume that coordinates are referred to a right-handed orthogonal Cartesian system with attached constant base vectors and coordinates referred to a general curvilinear system attached to a local covariant base vectors and local contravariant base vectors , both systems embedded in the Euclidean space . We shall also suppose diffeomorphic the transfomation . Then, by definition
(1) |
and its inverses
(2) |
Let us consider differentiation of base vectors , which may be written from (1),(2)
and using the Christoffel symbols this becomes
(3) |
where
(4) |
Since the transformation of covariant and contravariant metric tensors
are given by
is easy to see from here that Christoffel symbol enjoy the property
(5) |
In a similar way we find for the derivative of the contravariant base vectors
(6) |
Is easy to show the following results:
comma denoting differentiation with respect to the curvilinear coordinates and . When the coordinate curves are orthogonal we have the following formulae for the Christoffel symbols: (repeated indices are not to be summed)