![]() ![]() There is a nice relation between the two given below. This post started out by talking about the more familiar Kronecker delta as an introduction to the permutation symbol. Determinants of larger matrices work the same way. This is also the determinant of the matrix whose rows are the vectors a, b, and c. Similarly, the triple product of vectors a, b and c is So here we’re summing over j and k, each running from 1 to 3. Here we’re using tensor notation where components are indicated by superscripts rather than subscripts, and there’s an implied summation over repeated indices. The ith component of the cross product of b × c is For two indices,Īn example use of the permutation symbol is cross products. When all indices are distinct, the permutation symbol can be computed from a product. If you do have a list of integers, you can use the * operator to unpack the list into separate arguments. Both take a variable number of integers as arguments, not a list of integers as Mathematica does. It also has Eijk as an alias for LeviCivita. SymPy has a function LeviCivita for computing the permutation symbol. You can compute permutation symbols in Mathematica with the function Signature. The symbol ε 122 is 0 because the last two indices are equal. ![]() ε 312 = 1 because you can put the indices in order with two adjacent swaps: 3 1, then 3 2. Examplesįor example, ε 213 = -1 because it takes one adjacent swap, exchanging the 2 and the 1, to put the indices in order. In other words, permutations whose permutation symbol is 1. One of the families of finite simple groups are the alternating groups, the group of even permutations on a set with at least five elements. Incidentally, I mentioned even and odd permutations a few days ago in the context of finite simple groups. Two different ways of getting from one arrangement to another may use a different number of swaps, but the number of swaps in both approaches will have the same parity.) You could change one order of indices to another by different series of swaps. (There’s an implicit theorem here saying that the definition above makes sense. You could think of putting the indices into a bubble sort algorithm and counting whether the algorithm does an even or odd number of swaps. If it takes an odd number of swaps, the sign is -1. If you can order the indices with an even number of swaps, the sign of the permutation is 1. Otherwise, the symbol evaluates to 1 or -1. If any two of the subscripts are equal, the symbol evaluates to 0. The permutation symbol, sometimes called the Levi-Civita symbol, can have any number of subscripts. This is analogous to how you might reduce the complexity of a computer program. In other words, the symbol encapsulates some complexity, keeping it out of your calculation. It has some branching logic built into its definition, which keeps branching out of your calculation, letting you handle things more uniformly. That is, you don’t have to write “if … else …” in when doing your calculation. Because branching logic is built into the symbol, it can keep branching logic outside of your calculation. One example of this is the Kronecker delta function δ ij which is defined to be 1 if i = j and zero otherwise. Sometimes simple notation can make a big difference. ![]()
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