A smooth endomorphism of the tangent bundle defines the tensor derivation by and . On a differential one-form, . On a general tensor field, it acts by in each vector factor and by the negative dual action in each covector factor. The two actions cancel in each contracted pairing, proving compatibility with tensor contraction.
For the local flow of a smooth vector field , pull a tensor field back to the fixed base point before differentiating. Pullback uses on vector factors and the dual of on covector factors. The chain rule gives . In coordinates, , so . Differentiation of pullback preserves tensor contractions and obeys the Leibniz rule for tensor products; hence this is the tensor derivation defining the Lie derivative of a tensor field.
Lie derivative of a tensor field Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-07
For a smooth vector field , the Lie derivative is the tensor derivation determined by and . The identity permits its unique extension. On a differential one-form,
On differential forms it agrees with the usual Lie derivative of a differential form and Cartan's magic formula.
For a scalar, the Lie derivative of a function is its directional derivative:
The Lie derivative of a vector field is their Lie bracket of vector fields:
For a torsion-free connection,
The last term vanishes because the connection coefficients are symmetric in . This proves .
For the metric tensor statements use the Levi-Civita connection, which also has metric compatibility. The tensor derivation property of the Lie derivative of a tensor field gives
Expanding the first term using and using the vector identity cancels the derivatives of and . What remains is
Since are arbitrary, the Killing equation is
Metric compatibility is needed here, even though symmetry alone sufficed for the vector identity. In general the Lie derivative of a metric with nonmetricity contains a term . For example, with the metric tensor , zero connection coefficients and , the Lie derivative of a tensor field is , whereas . The usual metric connection interpretation of the question supplies the required compatibility.
For the Riemann curvature tensor calculation, keep the original PDF's convention. With and , it means
Thus the commutator on a covector has the opposite sign. Write . Taking a covariant derivative of the Killing equation makes antisymmetric in its first two indices, while the Ricci identity gives
Combining this with the first-two-index antisymmetry gives the three relations
Add the first and third and subtract the second. Pair symmetry and the first Bianchi identity imply . Consequently
This is the second covariant derivative of a Killing vector in the paper's convention; its sign is tied to the declared curvature-sign convention in Killing derivative identities, not to raising a particular index.
Set . Along any smooth curve with tangent vector , the chain rule and the just-proved identity give the Killing transport equations
Choose a parallel-propagated orthonormal frame along the curve. These become a homogeneous linear system of ordinary differential equations for the components of . Uniqueness of its initial value problem implies that zero initial data remain zero. Any point in the same connected component as can be joined to by a piecewise smooth curve. Therefore zero value and zero first derivative at force the Killing field and its derivative to vanish throughout that component, with no completeness assumption. On a manifold with one connected component this is the requested global result. Connectedness cannot be dropped: on two disjoint flat spacetimes, take the zero field on one and a nonzero translation on the other.
On a pseudo-Riemannian manifold of dimension with one connected component, the map is therefore injective. There are independent components of the value and of its antisymmetric derivative. The dimension bound for Killing vector fields is
It is attained in flat space by with constant antisymmetric , giving translations and infinitesimal rotations or Lorentz transformations. The four-dimensional maximum is 10. For a disconnected manifold the bound applies componentwise; there is no uniform global bound depending only on if the number of components is unrestricted.
Expand . Using the tensor Lie derivative of functions, vectors and covectors and its Leibniz rule gives
The contravariant slot has a minus sign and the covariant slot a plus sign.
For the commutator identity for Lie derivatives, put . The commutator of two tensor derivations is itself a tensor derivation, and commutes with tensor contractions. On a function, . On a vector field ,
by the Jacobi identity, which follows here by expanding the commutators of the operators acting on functions. For a type tensor, is a vector field, and contraction compatibility gives
As this holds for every , . Therefore
The derivation argument also establishes the identity for arbitrary tensor types by applying it to covector–vector pairings and then to tensor products.
A smooth vector field is a smooth section of a vector bundle of the tangent bundle, so . In a manifold chart, with smooth coefficients. It acts on a smooth function by . For a diffeomorphism , the pushforward of a vector field is
The Lie bracket of vector fields is the commutator of their actions on smooth functions:
The second derivatives of cancel, so this is again a vector field. The corresponding Jacobi identity is .
A local flow of is a smooth map on an open neighbourhood of satisfying and . On a sufficiently small neighbourhood and time interval, each is a diffeomorphism onto its image, with inverse . Uniqueness of integral curves of a vector field gives wherever both sides are defined. These are local statements; no assumption of a complete vector field is required.
A smooth tensor field of type is a smooth section of , where the factors are the tangent bundle and cotangent bundle. The flow definition of the Lie derivative of a tensor field is
Here pullback applies to each vector factor and the dual of to each covector factor, evaluating at . Thus all tensors being differentiated lie in the same fibre over .
For a smooth function, , and the chain rule gives
For a vector field , in local coordinates the expansions and give
Consequently
Pullback preserves tensor products and tensor contractions, so differentiation makes this definition a tensor derivation. It therefore agrees on every tensor field with the Lie derivative of a tensor field determined by these two formulas.
Now put . The chain rule gives
Thus is the local flow of . In the case , if , uniqueness of integral curves of a vector field makes on their common domains, or . Conversely, differentiating this commuting identity at zero gives , hence . This proves that diffeomorphism invariance of a vector field is equivalent to commuting with its local flow, with every identity understood on the domain where its compositions exist.
For a decomposable tensor field, consider a selected pairing in a tensor contraction. Its derivative is
by the defining one-form formula. In the Leibniz rule expansion of the uncontracted tensor, the terms differentiating these two selected factors combine into exactly this derivative of the pairing. Every term differentiating another factor passes unchanged through the contraction. Thus, first on local decomposable tensors and then by linearity on every local tensor expansion,
This is basis independent; in components the negative covector term and positive vector term for the two contracted slots cancel.
For uniqueness, any extension satisfying the tensor-product rule is local. If vanishes near , multiply it by a smooth cutoff function equal to one near and supported where . The identity implies . Any allowed extension on a differential one-form is forced by differentiating its contraction with every vector field. Its value on every local frame tensor is then forced by the tensor-product rule and its value on scalar coefficients. These local tensors span each tensor bundle, so two extensions agree everywhere.
Together with the preceding construction, this proves existence and uniqueness of the contraction-compatible tensor derivation, with the scalar-rule qualification already stated. No claim that every global tensor field is a finite sum of products of global vector fields is needed.
Write a local frame as , its dual basis as , and set . The one-form definition gives . Repeated indices are summed. Every tensor field has a unique local expansion
Define by applying the scalar operator to its coefficient and applying to one frame factor at a time, adding all these terms. In components this is
In each term only the indicated slot is replaced. This formula is real-linear and satisfies the Leibniz rule for a tensor product: differentiating a coefficient product uses the scalar product rule, and the list of differentiated frame factors splits into the two factors' lists.
To check that it is intrinsic, write as the row of frame fields and as the column of dual fields. Change frame by , where is an invertible smooth matrix. Then
Differentiating the inverse matrix gives ; it cancels the extra frame-change terms in the dual factors. The same cancellation in each tensor slot makes the two local formulas agree. Thus they glue to a global tensor derivation.
In particular, for arbitrary tensor types, not necessarily the same type,
The resulting type is the sum of their two covariant counts and their two contravariant counts. This also supplies the required real-linearity for every type, including functions as type .
First establish the scalar Leibniz rule, since it is needed for an extension to all tensor fields. Suppose every component of has positive dimension. Computing first with scalar and then as gives
At any point, a smooth cutoff function times a coordinate vector field can be chosen nonzero there. Evaluating the displayed identity proves
Thus the scalar operator is a derivation of an algebra. Derivations of smooth functions are vector fields, so the scalar operator is differentiation along a unique vector field ; no continuity assumption is needed. Indeed, if vanishes near , take a smooth cutoff function equal to one near and supported where . The identity gives . Thus depends only on the local function germ, so local coordinate functions may be extended with cutoffs before applying it. The local identity gives . Smooth local coefficients define .
The vector-field operator is local as well. If vanishes near , choose a cutoff equal to one near with support where . Then gives . We can therefore work with local frames without presuming a global frame.
For a differential one-form , the only possible contraction-compatible definition is
The scalar product rule and the given vector-field rule show that this is linear over in , so it defines a one-form. Its coefficients are smooth by evaluating the formula on local frame fields extended with cutoffs. It is real-linear in , and direct substitution gives .
The original PDF's hint has a transpose error. If for , then evaluation on every forces
not the untransposed coefficient array printed in the hint. For example, take , and on . The correct values are , . The printed hint instead makes the derivative of equal to .
There is also a genuine zero-dimensional edge case in the hypotheses: on a one-point manifold the vector-field space is zero, so the printed rule imposes no condition on the scalar map. Taking satisfies that rule but cannot extend to a tensor derivation, since the product rule requires . Thus the extension theorem is valid on positive-dimensional manifolds as above, or in every dimension if the scalar product rule is added explicitly. The next two parts use these precise hypotheses.
The tensor denoted acts as the rank-one endomorphism . In the paper's covector-first ordering it is written , using the canonical interchange of tensor factors; this is the same endomorphism.
On any smooth function ,
On a vector field , the Lie bracket of vector fields gives
so
Multiplication by preserves the tensor-product Leibniz rule and commutation with tensor contractions, since the latter are linear over smooth functions. Hence the difference is a real-linear contraction-compatible tensor derivation whose scalar operator is zero. Its agreement with on functions and vector fields determines its action on every tensor by uniqueness:
For example, on a differential one-form this gives . Equivalently , which checks the sign independently. This is the scaled Lie derivative defect identity.
Scaled Lie derivative defect identity Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
For a smooth function and vector field ,
on every tensor field, with interpreted as the endomorphism . Both sides vanish on functions; on vector fields this follows from . Both are contraction-compatible tensor derivations, so agreement on functions and vector fields proves equality on all tensor types. In particular .
Tensor derivation 2026-10-05
A tensor derivation is a real-linear operation preserving every tensor type, obeying the tensor-product Leibniz rule, and commuting with every tensor contraction. A derivation of smooth functions and a real-linear operator on vector fields satisfying extend uniquely to a tensor derivation. On a differential one-form it must satisfy
This expression is linear over smooth functions in . In a local frame , the dual rule is . Apply the product rule to every coefficient and frame factor to define the extension; these dual signs cancel under contraction. Frame changes agree by differentiating the inverse matrix. Cutoffs prove locality and hence uniqueness from local expansions.