ADM formalism 2026-10-14
The Arnowitt-Deser-Misner formalism expresses general relativity as constrained Hamiltonian evolution of a spatial metric and its conjugate momentum after a 3+1 decomposition of spacetime. Lapse and shift enforce the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints. For an asymptotically flat spacetime its boundary Hamiltonian gives the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner energy.
ADM momentum constraint for a P(X, phi) scalar field Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
Varying the shift in the 3+1 decomposition of spacetime gives a nondynamical momentum constraint. For a field it equates the spatial divergence of to the scalar momentum density.
Nonlinear scalar metric in a cosmological gradient expansion Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
With vectors and independent tensors neglected, finite scalar cosmological perturbations of the local spatial scale can be encoded by . Scalar lapse and shift potentials complete its 3+1 decomposition of spacetime. The exact shift-square term is , independently of the parametrization of the scalar shift.
Use the equivalent density form of harmonic slicing from part (ii). With , positive lapse function , and the corrected inverse metric tensor, its time component becomes
Thus , or
The spatial volume evolution identity gives . Subtraction yields , hence the harmonic lapse evolution is
The shift vector need not vanish; its transport term is essential in a general 3+1 decomposition of spacetime.
Take the orientation induced by the future-directed unit normal and positive lapse function . In coordinates adapted to the 3+1 decomposition of spacetime, any component with all four indices spatial vanishes: only three distinct spatial indices are available. The shift vector therefore contributes nothing, and
Here is the Levi-Civita symbol, and the last equality uses the metric determinant in a 3+1 decomposition, . The right side is precisely the spatial metric volume tensor, with component at , the appropriate permutation sign, and zero for repeated indices. Hence
More invariantly, the spatial volume form is the restriction to the hypersurface of the contraction of the spacetime volume form with .
Write for the spatial metric tensor and lower the shift vector with . For the negative-shift convention, the four-dimensional metric and its inverse have components
The normal has covariant components , so and it annihilates every tangent vector to the spatial slice. Since , its covariant derivative gives and therefore .
Compute the required Christoffel symbol using the symmetric connection formula. Its time-index term and spatial-index term combine to give
The spatial expression in parentheses is , where is the covariant derivative of . Thus the extrinsic curvature with a negative shift is
This derivation fixes both signs from the actual 3+1 decomposition of spacetime, rather than transferring a formula using the opposite shift vector convention. The connection formula used here has as its second differentiated term; the printed repeated-index version is a typographical error.
Comparison with the 3+1 decomposition of spacetime gives the diagonal spatial metric
The mixed metric coefficient is . Raising its index with yields the shift vector
Now
and . The positive lapse function is consequently
The inverse 3+1 decomposition of spacetime metric gives
The first term is the squared derivative along the hypersurface normal and the second is the spatial-gradient contribution.
With a future unit timelike normal in signature , this convention makes the extrinsic curvature trace equal to the normal congruence's expansion, . An expanding flat Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric has and . This is the opposite sign to the negative-expansion convention used in many 3+1 decomposition of spacetime formulas. Projection identities and momentum constraints must use the same convention throughout.
Spatial volume evolution identity Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
In a 3+1 decomposition of spacetime with , contract the metric evolution with and use the Jacobi determinant derivative formula. Here , , is the lapse function, and is the shift vector. The identity separates spatial transport and coordinate compression from the geometric volume change caused by extrinsic curvature.