Chapter 3 Cartesian Tensors University of （第三章笛卡儿张量大学）.pdf

Chapter 3 Cartesian Tensors 3.1 Suffix Notation and the Summation Convention We will consider vectors in 3D, though the notation we shall introduce applies (mostly) just as well to n dimensions. For a general vector x = (x , x , x ) 1 2 3 we shall refer to x , the ith component of x. The index i may take any of the values i 1, 2 or 3, and we refer to “the vector x ” to mean “the vector whose components are i (x , x , x )”. However, we cannot write x = x , since the LHS is a vector and the RHS a 1 2 3 i scalar. Instead, we can write [x] = x , and similarly [x + y] = x + y . i i i i i Note that the expression yi = xi implies that y = x; the statement in suffix notation is implicitly true for all three possible values of i (one at a time!). Einstein introduced a convention whereby if a particular suffix (e.g., i) appears twice in a single term of an expression then it is implicitly summed. For example, in traditional notation 3 x . y = x y + x y + x y = x y ; 1 1 2 2 3 3 i i i=1 using summation convention we simply write x . y = x y . i i All we are doing is not bothering to write down the ! The Rules of Summation Convention Summation convention does n