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The Levi-Civita connection is the unique affine connection that has both vanishing torsion tensor and metric compatibility. The affine connection decomposition shows exactly how an arbitrary affine connection departs from it: the contorsion tensor contributes the metric-compatible torsion correction, and the disformation tensor contributes the nonmetricity correction. The torsion and nonmetricity tensor, together with the metric tensor, determine the difference uniquely.

In the paper's convention the actual contorsion correction is $-K$, with the corrected half factor from part (i), and the disformation correction is $W$. Both corrections are tensors, although the separate connection coefficients $\Gamma$ and $S$ are not tensors. If both torsion and nonmetricity vanish, then $\boxed{\Gamma =S}$. Vanishing nonmetricity alone permits torsion, and vanishing torsion alone permits nonmetricity.

Choose a basis of $T_{p}M$ and use the affine exponential map to define affine normal coordinates. Its differential at zero is the identity, so the inverse function theorem gives a chart near $p$. By part (iii), radial geodesics have coordinates $x^{\mu }(s)=s{X}^{\mu }$. Their geodesic equations at $p$ imply ${\Gamma }^{\lambda }{}_{\mu \nu }(p)X^{\mu }{X}^{\nu }=0$ for every $X$. The polarization identity therefore gives ${\Gamma }^{\lambda }{}_{(\mu \nu )}(p)=0$.

The disformation tensor $W_{\mu \nu }{}^{\lambda }$ is symmetric in $\mu ,\nu$, whereas $T_{\mu \nu }{}^{\lambda }$ is antisymmetric. Also $T_{\nu }{}^{\lambda }{}_{\mu }=-T^{\lambda }{}_{\nu \mu }$. Taking the symmetric part of the corrected affine connection decomposition consequently gives the normal-coordinate identityThus the final identity in the PDF is correct after the half-factor repair in part (i). In general ${\Gamma }^{\lambda }{}_{\mu \nu }(p)=\frac{1}{2}{T}_{\mu \nu }{}^{\lambda }(p)$ in the paper's convention, rather than zero. Neither $S$ nor the first derivatives of the metric tensor need vanish in these affine normal coordinates. With the Levi-Civita connection, both torsion and nonmetricity vanish and the usual vanishing of the Christoffel symbols is recovered.