Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 309 4 b i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Define the stress-energy tensor by metric variation with the scalar held fixed:Use compactly supported variations to remove boundary terms. The first covariant derivative of a scalar field is an ordinary derivative, so it has no connection variation. Varying the kinetic term and the volume form gives
For the curvature term set . Using part (a), its variation isApplying integration by parts twice moves each pair of derivatives from the metric variation onto . The result iswhere is the Einstein tensor and is the d'Alembert operator. Comparing with the defining variation gives the stress-energy tensor of a nonminimally coupled scalar field:The factor follows from the action's coupling ; a convention using would instead give in that bracket. At this reduces to the massless Klein-Gordon scalar stress-energy tensor.