Saturday, February 18, 2017

general relativity - Is there a natural (suitable) definition for functional derivative in Curved space time


If $$\delta S = \int \sqrt g F[\phi] \delta \phi\tag{1}$$


Then is it natural to define the functional derivative as follows,


$$\frac{\delta S}{\delta \phi} = F[\phi].\tag{2}$$



In particular does this definition satisfy the commutativity of the functional derivatives.


I understand that this is not the standard definition of a functional derivative, but if I define this way this makes a certain calculation I am doing much easier to control. So to Clarify what I want to know is that if I define the 'functional derivative' this way then if


$$S = \int \sqrt{g} L[\phi, g_{\mu \nu}]\tag{3}$$ then


is the following true?


$$\frac{\delta}{\delta\phi} \frac{\delta}{\delta g_{\mu \nu}} S = \frac{\delta}{\delta g_{\mu \nu}} \frac{\delta}{\delta\phi} S \tag{4} $$


This is my procedure for computing the second functional derivative suppose


$$\frac{\delta}{\delta \phi}S = E[\phi, g_{\mu \nu}]\tag{5}$$


and $$\frac{\delta}{\delta g_{\mu \nu}}S = E^{\mu \nu}[\phi, g_{\mu \nu}]\tag{6}$$


(equations of motion) Then to compute second functional derivative we write, eg.


$$E[\phi, g_{\mu \nu}](x) = \int \sqrt{g} d^4 y E(y) \hat \delta(x-y)\tag{7}$$



where $$\hat \delta (x-y) = \frac{\delta(x-y)}{\sqrt{g}}\tag{8} $$ is the generalised delta function. After this we can use the same definition to compute


$$\frac{\delta} {\delta g_{\mu \nu}} \int \sqrt{g} d^4 y E(y) \hat \delta(x-y)\tag{9} .$$ Of course now the result would involve delta functions.




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