The Fermi-Walker Derivative

Notes for GR-I and GR-II - CCD

Consider a time-like curve , with parameter , and tangent vector u . We will dene along , which we will denote by u the Fermi-Walker derivative of the vector t t, to be: u u u u } t = u t + t {u u u (1)

a b B is Am B n in component notation, and u The outer product A t = t ||b u is the total a a and we also have ua = dx covariant derivative along the curve which we also write as Dt D d as the tangent vector along the curve . The unspecied constant is to be determined by requiring that the Fermi-Walker derivative of the tangent vector to a time-like curve vanish along that curve. This makes the Fermi-Walker derivative correspond as closely as possible to the total covariant derivative, which itself ensures that the tangent vector to a geodesic curve has vanishing total covariant derivative along that geodesic. In component notation, the Fermi-Walker derivative becomes: a u t =

Dta Dub Dua + t b ua ub D D D

(2)

The intention in using the Fermi-Walker derivative is to have a transport rule that will generalize the fact that the tangent vector to a geodesic curve is parallelly transported along that geodesic. Our denition represents the simplest linear dierential operator that reduces to parallel transport along a geodesic, since the coecient in the additional term contains only the tangent vector to the curve and its covariant directional derivative along the curve. Since the general time-like curve is not geodesic, the equivalent condition in this case is that the tangent vector have a vanishing FW derivative along its own trajectory curve. We need to consider the FW derivative as dened above when applied to the tangent vector itself, so we consider:
a u u =

Dub Dua Dua + u b ua ub D D D

(3)

Since ua is the tangent vector to a time-like curve, we have ua ua = where = 1 for a a signature of 2. Thus (ua ua )||b ub = 0, but expanding this leads to ua Du = 0. Note that D

c Charles C. Dyer

this means that the acceleration vector is always orthogonal to the velocity, an already familiar result. We can now write the FW derivative of the tangent vector as:
a u u =

Dua Dub Dua + ua ub ub ub D D D

(4)

Using the orthogonality result and the fact that ua ua = , this becomes:
a u u = (1 )

Dua D

(5)

Since = 1 the vanishing of the FW derivative of the tangent vector requires that = , and we write the Fermi-Walker derivative as:
a u t =

Dta Dub Dua + t b ua ub D D D

where

= uc uc .

(6)

In writing down the rst expression for the Fermi-Walker derivative, we chose the correction term to have the coecient u u u u u u or u
a Du b

b Du

(7)

In requiring the Fermi-Walker derivative of the tangent vector to vanish, we used the sign of the second term explicitly, but the vanishing of the term related to the rst term in this coecient was independent of the sign of that term, being based simply on the orthogonality of the velocity and the acceleration. The sign of this term only becomes important when one tries to develop ideas relating to the use of the Fermi-Walker derivative on products of vectors, for example. Consider two vectors, sa and ta , Fermi-Walker transported along some time-like curve with tangent vector ua . To determine the change in the scalar ta sa along the curve, we would compute the derivative: D(ta sa ) Dta Dsa = sa + ta D D D (8)

Now, using the denition of the FW derivative, we can write each of these derivatives as: Dta a ab = u t tb F D where F ab is the antisymmetric object: F ab = ua We then have: D(ta sa ) a ab a ab + ta u = sa u s sb F t tb F D 2 (11) Dub Dua ub D D (10) and Dsa a ab = u s sb F D (9)

which we can regroup and re-label indices to yield: D(ta sa ) a a ab = sa u + F ba t + t a u s s a tb F D (12)

The antisymmetry of F ab can now be seen as necessary, since it implies that the last term vanishes, and we have D(ta sa ) a a = sa u (13) t + t a u s D
a a but this becomes zero when we recall that u t and u s were both assumed to vanish. Thus the inner product of any two vectors remains constant if each of the vectors is FermiWalker transported along the curve. We have now demonstrated that the FW derivative as dened in equation(6) corresponds to the natural linear generalization of the total covariant derivative, now along a time-like but not necessarily geodesic curve. In particular, the FW derivative of the tangent vector to that time-like curve vanishes, and the inner products of all pairs of vectors that are FW transported along curve also remain constant. Thus, for example, locally dened orthogonal basis vectors remain orthogonal, and have unchanged lengths.