WeylSpinor - Maple Help
For the best experience, we recommend viewing online help using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

Online Help

All Products    Maple    MapleSim


Tensor[WeylSpinor] - calculate the spinor form of the Weyl tensor

Calling Sequences

     WeylSpinor(, W)

     WeylSpinor(dyad, NP)

     WeylSpinor(dyad, PT,, )

Parameters

         - a solder form

   W      - (optional) the Weyl tensor for the metric determined by the solder form sigma

   dyad   - a list of 2 independent, rank 1 covariant two-component spinors

   NP     - a table, with indices "Psi0", "Psi1", "Psi2", "Psi3", "Psi4" and specifying the 5 Newman-Penrose coefficients for the Weyl spinor to be constructed

   PT     - the Petrov type of the Weyl spinor to be constructed

   ,   - the complex numbers used to construct the Penrose normal form of the Weyl spinor

 

Description

Examples

See Also

Description

• 

Let be the metric tensor defined by the solder form  and let  be the Weyl tensor for . Then the spinor form of  is a covariant rank 8 Hermitian spinor which, because of the algebraic properties of W, can be decomposed as

 The symmetric rank 4 spinor  is called the Weyl spinor. Ifis a spinor dyad (a pair of rank-2 spinors with ) then the spinor

 can be expressed as

The complex scalars  are called the Newman-Penrose coefficients for the Weyl tensor. Every Weyl spinor can be transformed by a change of dyad to a certain canonical form depending on the Petrov type of the WeylTensor. See AdaptedSpinorDyad, convert/DGspinor,  NPCurvatureScalars, PetrovType, SolderForm, WeylTensor.

• 

If the Weyl tensor for the metric has been previously computed, then the Weyl spinor will be computed more quickly using the calling sequence WeylSpinor(, W).

• 

In the second calling sequence the Weyl spinor is calculated directly from the a spinor dyadand a set of Newman-Penrose coefficients using equation (2).

• 

The third calling sequence also uses equation (2), but the Newman-Penrose coefficients are calculated from the Petrov type according to the following normal forms rules:

Type I.

Type II.

Type III.

Type D.

Type N.

Type O.

• 

This command is part of the DifferentialGeometry:-Tensor package, and so can be used in the form WeylSpinor(...) only after executing the commands with(DifferentialGeometry); with(Tensor); in that order. It can always be used in the long form DifferentialGeometry:-Tensor:-WeylSpinor(...).

Examples

 

Example 1.

First create a vector bundle over with base coordinates and fiber coordinates.

(2.1)

 

Define a metric  on . For this example we use a pure radiation metric of Petrov type N. (See (22.70) in Stephani, Kramer et al.) Note that we have changed the sign of the metric to conform to the signature convention [1, -1, -1, -1] used by the spinor formalism in DifferentialGeometry.

M > 

(2.2)

 

Use DGGramSchmidt to calculate an orthonormal frame F for the metric .

M > 

(2.3)

 

Use SolderForm to compute the solder form sigma from the frame F.

M > 

(2.4)

 

Calculate the Weyl spinor from the solder form sigma.

M > 

(2.5)

 

Example 2.

We check that the same answer for the Weyl spinor Psi1 is obtained if we first calculate the Weyl tensor of the metric  defined by .

M > 

(2.6)
M > 

(2.7)
M > 

(2.8)

 

Example 3.

We see that the rank 4 spinor Psi1 calculated by WeylSpinor factors as the 4-th tensor product of a rank 1 spinor psi. This affirms the fact that the metric g has Petrov type N.

M > 

(2.9)
M > 

(2.10)
M > 

(2.11)
M > 

(2.12)

 

Example 4.

We check that the Weyl spinor Psi1 satisfies the decomposition (1) given above. From the Weyl tensor W calculated in Example 2, we find the left-hand side LHS of (1).  (The intermediate expressions, even in this simple example, are too long to display.)

M > 

 

We re-arrange the indices to place all the unbarred (unprimed) indices first and all the barred (primed) indices last.

M > 

 

We calculate the first terms on the right-hand side of (1) as RHS1.

M > 

(2.13)
M > 

 

We use the command ConjugateSpinor to find the complex conjugate of Psi1. Then we calculate the second terms on the right-hand side of (1) as RHS2.

M > 

M > 

(2.14)
M > 

 

We check that the left-hand side and right-hand side of (1) are the same.

M > 

(2.15)

 

Example 5.

We use the second calling sequence to calculate a Weyl spinor from a spinor dyad and a set of Newman-Penrose coefficients.

M > 

(2.16)

(2.17)

(2.18)

(2.19)

 

Example 6.

We use the third calling sequence to calculate a Weyl spinor in adapted normal form.

M > 

(2.20)
M > 

(2.21)
M > 

(2.22)

See Also

DifferentialGeometry, Tensor, AdaptedSpinorDyad, AdaptedNullTetrad, ConjugateSpinor, DGGramSchmidt, NPCurvatureScalars, Physics[Riemann], PetrovType, RicciSpinor, Physics[Ricci], SolderForm, WeylTensor, Physics[Weyl]


Download Help Document