## Thursday, 23 July 2020

### Conformal Transformations

I want to understand the conformal diagrams in section 5.7 so I must read appendix G then H. Most of this is just checking Carroll's formulas for the conformal 'dynamical variables' - things like the connection coefficients and the Riemann tensor. It is eye bogglingly dense.

Conformal transformations all start when you multiply each component of the metric by a scalar $\omega$ which may depend on the coordinates. So we have a conformal metric $${\widetilde{g}}_{\mu\nu}=\omega^2g_{\mu\nu}$$Then we want find things like the Riemann tensor in the 'conformal frame'. It's quite easy to show that it is$${\widetilde{R}}_{\ \ \ \sigma\mu\nu}^\rho=R_{\ \ \ \sigma\mu\nu}^\rho+\nabla_\mu C_{\ \ \ \nu\sigma}^\rho-\nabla_\nu C_{\ \ \ \mu\sigma}^\rho+C_{\ \ \ \mu\lambda}^\rho C_{\ \ \ \nu\sigma}^\lambda-C_{\ \ \ \nu\lambda}^\rho C_{\ \ \ \mu\sigma}^\lambda$$where$$C_{\ \ \ \mu\nu}^\rho=\omega^{-1}\left(\delta_\nu^\rho\nabla_\mu\omega+\delta_\mu^\rho\nabla_\nu\omega-g^{\rho\lambda}g_{\mu\nu}\nabla_\lambda\omega\right)$$
Carrol then says "it is a matter of simply plugging in and grinding away to get"$${\widetilde{R}}_{\ \ \ \sigma\mu\nu}^\rho=R_{\ \ \ \sigma\mu\nu}^\rho-2\left(\delta_{[\mu}^\rho\delta_{\nu]}^\alpha\delta_\sigma^\beta-g_{\sigma[\mu}\delta_{\nu]}^\alpha g^{\rho\beta}\right)\omega^{-1}\nabla_\alpha\nabla_\beta\omega$$$$+2\left(2\delta_{[\mu}^\rho\delta_{\nu]}^\alpha\delta_\sigma^\beta-2g_{\sigma[\mu}\delta_{\nu]}^\alpha g^{\rho\beta}+g_{\sigma[\mu}\delta_{\nu]}^\rho g^{\alpha\beta}\right)\ \omega^{-2}\left(\nabla_\alpha\omega\right)\left(\nabla_\beta\omega\right)$$
I'm glad it wasn't complicated because getting to that took two dense pages part of which is shown below. He's also used the antisymmetrisation operator [], which is very clever but hard work. It also screws up my latex generator which does not like ]'s in indices.
See that in searchable form at Commentary App G Conformal Transformations.pdf (10 gruelling pages)