Tuesday, January 14, 2020

homework and exercises - Infinitesimal Lorentz transformation is antisymmetric


The Minkowski metric transforms under Lorentz transformations as


\begin{align*}\eta_{\rho\sigma} = \eta_{\mu\nu}\Lambda^\mu_{\ \ \ \rho} \Lambda^\nu_{\ \ \ \sigma} \end{align*}


I want to show that under a infinitesimal transformation $\Lambda^\mu_{\ \ \ \nu}=\delta^\mu_{\ \ \ \nu} + \omega^\mu_{{\ \ \ \nu}}$, that $\omega_{\mu\nu} = -\omega_{\nu\mu}$.


I tried expanding myself: \begin{align*} \eta_{\rho\sigma} &= \eta_{\mu\nu}\left(\delta^\mu_{\ \ \ \rho} + \omega^\mu_{{\ \ \ \rho}}\right)\left(\delta^\nu_{\ \ \ \sigma} + \omega^\nu_{{\ \ \ \sigma}}\right) \\ &= (\delta_{\nu\rho}+\omega_{\nu\rho})\left(\delta^\nu_{\ \ \ \sigma} + \omega^\nu_{{\ \ \ \sigma}}\right) \\ &= \delta_{\rho\sigma}+\omega^\rho_{\ \ \ \sigma}+\omega_{\sigma\rho}+\omega_{\nu\rho} \omega^\nu_{{\ \ \ \sigma}} \end{align*}


Been a long time since I've dealt with tensors so I don't know how to proceed.



Answer



Note that if you lower an index of the Kronecker delta, it becomes the metric:


$\eta_{\mu\nu}\delta^{\mu}_{\rho}=\delta_{\nu\rho}=\eta_{\nu\rho}$



And in your last step you got a wrong index. It should be $\omega_{\rho\sigma}$, not $\omega^{\rho}_{\sigma}$.


Then, the metric terms cancel and you neglect cuadratic terms.


That should be enough to solve it.


No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...