Lecture

Covariant Derivatives and Christoffel Symbols

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In courses (2)

PHYS-427: Relativity and cosmology I

Introduce the students to general relativity and its classical tests. ...

PHYS-428: Relativity and cosmology II

This course is the basic introduction to modern cosmology. It introduces students to the main concepts and formalism of cosmology, the observational status of Hot Big Bang theory and discusses major physical processes in the early Universe. ...

Description

This lecture covers the relation between accelerated coordinate systems and inertial coordinate systems, non-linear transformation of coordinates, Jacobian, one-to-one correspondence, volume elements, basis vectors, covariant derivatives, parallel transport, Christoffel symbols, Lorentz case, scalar functions, covariant and contravariant vectors, metric tensor, Kronecker symbol, tensors, and rules for covariant derivatives. It also discusses the properties of covariant derivatives, the metric tensor, and Christoffel symbols, emphasizing the importance of the symmetric property of the metric tensor. The lecture concludes with the concept of covariant derivatives of tensors and the relationship between the metric tensor and Christoffel symbols.

Instructor

Victor Gorbenko

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Jonas Dujava, Anders Wallberg, Mattia Varrone, Aleksandr Zhabin, Veronica Sacchi Courses Classical electrodynamics PHYS-324 The goal of this course is the study of the physical and conceptual consequences of Maxwell equations. Relativity and cosmology II PHYS-428 This course is the basic introduction to modern cosmology. It introduces students to the main concepts and formalism of cosmology, the observational status of Hot Big Bang theory and dis

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Mathematics

Geometry: Differential geometry

Analysis: Tensor analysis

Algebra: Linear algebra

Physics

Relativity: Special relativity

Related concepts (32)

Exterior covariant derivative

In the mathematical field of differential geometry, the exterior covariant derivative is an extension of the notion of exterior derivative to the setting of a differentiable principal bundle or vector bundle with a connection. Let G be a Lie group and P → M be a principal G-bundle on a smooth manifold M. Suppose there is a connection on P; this yields a natural direct sum decomposition of each tangent space into the horizontal and vertical subspaces. Let be the projection to the horizontal subspace.

Tensor

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 (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product.

Lie derivative

In differential geometry, the Lie derivative (liː ), named after Sophus Lie by Władysław Ślebodziński, evaluates the change of a tensor field (including scalar functions, vector fields and one-forms), along the flow defined by another vector field. This change is coordinate invariant and therefore the Lie derivative is defined on any differentiable manifold. Functions, tensor fields and forms can be differentiated with respect to a vector field. If T is a tensor field and X is a vector field, then the Lie derivative of T with respect to X is denoted .

Directional derivative

A directional derivative is a concept in multivariable calculus that measures the rate at which a function changes in a particular direction at a given point. The directional derivative of a multivariable differentiable (scalar) function along a given vector v at a given point x intuitively represents the instantaneous rate of change of the function, moving through x with a velocity specified by v. The directional derivative of a scalar function f with respect to a vector v at a point (e.g.

Coordinate system

In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is significant, and they are sometimes identified by their position in an ordered tuple and sometimes by a letter, as in "the x-coordinate". The coordinates are taken to be real numbers in elementary mathematics, but may be complex numbers or elements of a more abstract system such as a commutative ring.

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