July 25, 2008
see also the
sequel
Evans is complaining that I would always misrepresent his work. So what is this?
This tops all:
From Evans' todays blog
http://www.atomicprecision.com/blog/2008/07/24/a-short-history-of-cyberstalking-2/
. . . The incident which catalysed the barrister’s letter was a typical
one
in which Bruhn asserts that d ^ (d ^ omega) is
zero.
Evans should have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exact_form
He will find this:
... a closed form is a differential form a
whose differential is zero (da = 0),
and an exact form is a differential form that is the differential of
another differential form
(a = db for some
differential form b, known as a primitive for
a).
Since d² = 0, to be exact is a sufficient condition to be closed.
In this text the symbol ^ (or Ù) is suppressed.
In simpler words:
α = dÙω is an exact form since being the differential
of the form ω.
Due to
dÙα =
dÙ(dÙω)
= (dÙd)Ùω
= 0Ùω = 0.
Some additional archaeology:
Evans came across the equation
dÙdÙω = 0
by my hint in There I had performed a calculation that was left to the reader in Evans'
standard textbook, S.M. Carroll's Lecture Notes [1]
between [1,(3.138)] and [1,(3.140)] And S.M.Carroll assumed that an attentive reader
would have kept in mind what he said on p.22:
dÙd = d² = 0
we may conclude for the exact form α
This is folklore!
http://www2.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~bruhn/CommentaryApp01P89.html
where I pointed to a calculation in Sect.2 of
http://www2.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~bruhn/onMwesPaper100-2.html
Another interesting fact about exterior differentiation is that, for any form A,
d(dA) = 0 , (1.84)
which is often written d² = 0. This identity is a consequence of the definition of d and the fact that partial derivatives commute, ∂α∂β = ∂β∂α . . . .
[1] S.M. Carroll, Lecture Notes on General Relativity,
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/9712/9712019v1.pdf