vector fields - Index Notation with Del Operators - Physics Stack Exchange https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109628/index-notation-wit...

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Index Notation with Del Operators

I'm having trouble with some concepts of Index Notation. (Einstein notation)

If I take the divergence of curl of a vector, first I do the parenthesis:

and then I apply the outer ...

and get:

I am not sure if I applied the outer correctly. If I did do it correctly, however, what is my next step? I guess I just don't know the rules of
index notation well enough. Can I apply the index of to the inside the parenthesis? Or is that illegal?

notation vector-fields differentiation

edited Apr 23 '14 at 6:43 asked Apr 23 '14 at 4:59

Danu Tyler P
11.7k 8 41 79 43 1 9

1 Hint to the question (v1): Recheck the definition of a curl. Qmechanic Apr 23 '14 at 5:09

Ummm... curl is nabla *Cross V(vector)... What is wrong with that? Tyler P Apr 23 '14 at 5:47

The parenthesis is the Curl of Vector V. But what about the actual index notation part? Any hints there? Tyler P
Apr 23 '14 at 5:49

WOOPS I didn't write the Epsilon correctly. I didn't realize that. I will fix it now. (that wasn't my question, I'm still
confused about what to do after this step) Tyler P Apr 23 '14 at 5:53

Take another look at your second expression; you're getting 3 k's for indices. That is always wrong. Also, think about
your first equation. Is the result a vector, or something else? Danu Apr 23 '14 at 6:43

1 Answer

First some notation

Now, to your problem,

writing it in index notation

Now, simply compute it, (remember the Levi-Civita is a constant)

Here we have an interesting thing, the Levi-Civita is completely anti-symmetric on i and j and
have another term which is completely symmetric: it turns out to be zero.

Lets make the last step more clear. We can always say that , so we have

1 of 2 5/5/2017 12:35 AM
vector fields - Index Notation with Del Operators - Physics Stack Exchange https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109628/index-notation-wit...

Now lets interchange in the second Levi-Civita the index , so that

Now we can just rename the index (no interchange was done here,
just renamed).

We can than put the Levi-Civita at evidency,

And, because V_k is a good field, there must be no problem to interchange the derivatives

And, as you can see, what is between the parentheses is simply zero.

edited Apr 23 '14 at 7:41 answered Apr 23 '14 at 7:30

Erich
362 1 12

excellent answer. inya Mar 7 '16 at 22:56

2 of 2 5/5/2017 12:35 AM