Skip to main content

Tensor analysis


Has anybody used tensors in Mathematica? How to properly work with them? I find Mathematica not very friendly in this field, as I am defining my own functions for lowering & raising indices, multiplication and stuff like that. I was wondering if there is some good package or a secret way to use tensors more properly in Mathematica. For example, I need tensor analysis for general relativity kind of calculations.



Answer



Mathematica 9 contains some functionality for working with symbolic tensors.


Here's a list of packages in no particular order, that may have some functionality for working with symbolic tensors.





  • TensoriaCalc - intended for basic calculations in general relativity, but not finished (calculates only Christoffel symbols, Riemann and Ricci tensor). Parallel working with many metrics is possible. Symbolic calculations are not supported.




  • FeynCalc




  • grt - intended for basic calculations in general relativity, but full of bugs (only Christoffel symbols fully function). Symbolic calculations are not supported.





  • NCAlgebra, for manipulating non-commuting algebraic expressions and computing non-commutative Gröbner bases. It allows working with symbolic matrices and symbolic block matrices (e.g. symbolic block matrix inversion).




  • xAct - a package designed by researchers for large scale projects in general relativity; subpackages capable of extensive tensor manipulation (xTensor, xCoba) as well as perturbation theory in general relativity to any order (xPert). Other subpackages can also work with tensor spherical harmonics, spinor computations as well as exterior calculus (diferential forms).




  • GRQUICK




  • MathTensor (non-free)





  • Tensorial (non-free)




  • Ricci (last updated Sep 2011)




  • diffgeo (free) - a very simple package for differential geometry. Works only with given basis and metric




  • GREATER2 (free) - a simple package for tensorial calculations. Aimed more at physicists where e.g. the metric can be input as a line element.


See also the Wikipedia page on Tensor Software.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

plotting - How to draw lines between specified dots on ListPlot?

I would like to create a plot where I have unconnected dots and some connected. So far, I have figured out how to draw the dots. My code is the following: ListPlot[{{1, 1}, {2, 2}, {3, 3}, {4, 4}, {1, 4}, {2, 5}, {3, 6}, {4, 7}, {1, 7}, {2, 8}, {3, 9}, {4, 10}, {1, 10}, {2, 11}, {3, 12}, {4,13}, {2.5, 7}}, Ticks -> {{1, 2, 3, 4}, None}, AxesStyle -> Thin, TicksStyle -> Directive[Black, Bold, 12], Mesh -> Full] I have thought using ListLinePlot command, but I don't know how to specify to the command to draw only selected lines between the dots. Do have any suggestions/hints on how to do that? Thank you. Answer One possibility would be to use Epilog with Line : ListPlot[ {{1, 1}, {2, 2}, {3, 3}, {4, 4}, {1, 4}, {2, 5}, {3, 6}, {4, 7}, {1, 7}, {2, 8}, {3, 9}, {4, 10}, {1, 10}, {2, 11}, {3, 12}, {4, 13}, {2.5, 7}}, Ticks -> {{1, 2, 3, 4}, None}, AxesStyle -> Thin, TicksStyle -> Directive[Black, Bold, 12], Mesh -> Full, Epilog -> { Line[ ...

dynamic - How can I make a clickable ArrayPlot that returns input?

I would like to create a dynamic ArrayPlot so that the rectangles, when clicked, provide the input. Can I use ArrayPlot for this? Or is there something else I should have to use? Answer ArrayPlot is much more than just a simple array like Grid : it represents a ranged 2D dataset, and its visualization can be finetuned by options like DataReversed and DataRange . These features make it quite complicated to reproduce the same layout and order with Grid . Here I offer AnnotatedArrayPlot which comes in handy when your dataset is more than just a flat 2D array. The dynamic interface allows highlighting individual cells and possibly interacting with them. AnnotatedArrayPlot works the same way as ArrayPlot and accepts the same options plus Enabled , HighlightCoordinates , HighlightStyle and HighlightElementFunction . data = {{Missing["HasSomeMoreData"], GrayLevel[ 1], {RGBColor[0, 1, 1], RGBColor[0, 0, 1], GrayLevel[1]}, RGBColor[0, 1, 0]}, {GrayLevel[0], GrayLevel...

Is there a way to do conditional matrix loop using 'continue'

I have the following: n = 3; m = 5; ww = RandomReal[{0, 0.1}, {n, n}]; uu = RandomReal[{0, 1}, {m, n}]; pp = RandomReal[{0, 1}, {n, n}]; ss = RandomInteger[{0, 5}, {m, n}]; Grid[{{"ww", "uu", "pp", "ss"}, {ww // TableForm, uu // TableForm, pp // TableForm, ss // TableForm}}, Spacings -> {5, 2}, Dividers -> All] where I would like to look at every element of matrix ss and produce a matrix tt , with zeroes at the locations in ss which have zeroes, and in all other positions do the following: tt = (-1/Subscript[ww, m]) Log[(1 - uu)/(Subscript[pp, m - 1])], where Subscript[ww, m] is the value at index of ww matrix and where Subscript[pp, m - 1] is the value at index-1 of pp matrix. So for example if the first value ever read from matrix ss happens to be 2, then value taken from matrix ww would be from the row 2, but from pp would be from row 1. Also how to tell difference between a 0 as a valid value from within the matrix elemen...