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Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors, including scalars and vectors (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product.
An action of such a gravitational scalar–tensor theory can be written as follows: = [() () + (,)], where is the metric determinant, is the Ricci scalar constructed from the metric , is a coupling constant with the dimensions , () is the scalar-field potential, is the material Lagrangian and represents the non-gravitational fields.
A Lorentz scalar may be generated from, e.g., the scalar product of vectors, or by contracting tensors. While the components of the contracted quantities may change under Lorentz transformations, the Lorentz scalars remain unchanged.
As a consequence, several physical quantities that are scalars in "classical" (non-relativistic) physics need to be combined with other quantities and treated as four-vectors or tensors. For example, the charge density at a point in a medium, which is a scalar in classical physics, must be combined with the local current density (a 3-vector) to ...
The tensors of order zero are just the scalars (elements of the field F), those of contravariant order 1 are the vectors in V, and those of covariant order 1 are the one-forms in V ∗ (for this reason, the elements of the last two spaces are often called the contravariant and covariant vectors).
According to the representation theory of the Lorentz group, these quantities are built out of scalars, four-vectors, four-tensors, and spinors. In particular, a Lorentz covariant scalar (e.g., the space-time interval ) remains the same under Lorentz transformations and is said to be a Lorentz invariant (i.e., they transform under the trivial ...
For symmetric tensors, these definitions are reduced. [2] The correspondence between the principal invariants and the characteristic polynomial of a tensor, in tandem with the Cayley–Hamilton theorem reveals that + =
Cartesian tensors may be used with any Euclidean space, or more technically, any finite-dimensional vector space over the field of real numbers that has an inner product. Use of Cartesian tensors occurs in physics and engineering, such as with the Cauchy stress tensor and the moment of inertia tensor in rigid body dynamics.