Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-2/6/b/solution

Take the trace first: the antisymmetric tensor has zero diagonal and is traceless, so . Taking symmetric and antisymmetric parts then gives the scalar, symmetric-traceless and axial tensor decomposition:
The Kronecker delta satisfies , which verifies . Substitution verifies the original decomposition and also proves its uniqueness.

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