Concept
Christoffel symbols
Related concepts (23)
Tetrad formalism
The tetrad formalism is an approach to general relativity that generalizes the choice of basis for the tangent bundle from a coordinate basis to the less restrictive choice of a local basis, i.e. a locally defined set of four linearly independent vector fields called a tetrad or vierbein. It is a special case of the more general idea of a vielbein formalism, which is set in (pseudo-)Riemannian geometry. This article as currently written makes frequent mention of general relativity; however, almost everything it says is equally applicable to (pseudo-)Riemannian manifolds in general, and even to spin manifolds.
Einstein tensor
In differential geometry, the Einstein tensor (named after Albert Einstein; also known as the trace-reversed Ricci tensor) is used to express the curvature of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold. In general relativity, it occurs in the Einstein field equations for gravitation that describe spacetime curvature in a manner that is consistent with conservation of energy and momentum. The Einstein tensor is a tensor of order 2 defined over pseudo-Riemannian manifolds.
Holonomic basis
In mathematics and mathematical physics, a coordinate basis or holonomic basis for a differentiable manifold M is a set of basis vector fields {e_1, ..., e_n} defined at every point P of a region of the manifold as where δs is the displacement vector between the point P and a nearby point Q whose coordinate separation from P is δx^α along the coordinate curve x^α (i.e. the curve on the manifold through P for which the local coordinate x^α varies and all other coordinates are constant).