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The metric tensor

The covariant and contravariant metric tensors and are defined as follows:

 

The name metric tensor is related to the fact that the length ds of a small line-segment satisfies

 

The determinant of is called g, and is given by

 

The two-dimensional version of (2.12) is given by

 

By writing out the right-hand side one sees that

 



Tatiana Tijanova
Wed Mar 26 10:36:42 MET 1997