Exterior derivative

On a

If a differential $k$ -form is thought of as measuring the flux through an infinitesimal $k$ -parallelotope at each point of the manifold, then its exterior derivative can be thought of as measuring the net flux through the boundary of a $(k + 1)$ -parallelotope at each point.

Definition

The exterior derivative of a differential form of degree $k$ (also differential $k$ -form, or just $k$ -form for brevity here) is a differential form of degree $k + 1$ .

If $f$ is a

1

-form such that for every smooth vector field

X

,

df (X) = d X f

, where

d X f

is the directional derivative

of

f

in the direction of

X

.

The exterior product of differential forms (denoted with the same symbol $\land$ ) is defined as their

exterior product

.

There are a variety of equivalent definitions of the exterior derivative of a general $k$ -form.

In terms of axioms

The exterior derivative is defined to be the unique $ℝ$ -linear mapping from $k$ -forms to $(k + 1)$ -forms that has the following properties:

$df$ is the differential of $f$ for a $0$ -form $f$ .
$d (df) = 0$ for a $0$ -form $f$ .
$d (α \land β) = dα \land β + (-1) p (α \land dβ)$ where $α$ is a $p$ -form. That is to say, $d$ is an
antiderivation of degree $1$ on the exterior algebra of differential forms (see the graded product rule
).

The second defining property holds in more generality: $d (dα) = 0$ for any $k$ -form $α$ ; more succinctly, $d 2 = 0$ . The third defining property implies as a special case that if $f$ is a function and $α$ is a $k$ -form, then $d (fα) = d (f \land α) = df \land α + f \land dα$ because a function is a $0$ -form, and scalar multiplication and the exterior product are equivalent when one of the arguments is a scalar.^[citation needed]

In terms of local coordinates

Alternatively, one can work entirely in a

multi-index

I = (i 1, ..., i k)

with

1 \leq i p \leq n

for

1 \leq p \leq k

(and denoting

dx i 1 \land ... \land dx i k

with

dx I

), the exterior derivative of a (simple)

k

-form

\varphi =g\,dx^{I}=g\,dx^{i_{1}}\wedge dx^{i_{2}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}

over $ℝ n$ is defined as

d{\varphi }={\frac {\partial g}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}\wedge dx^{I}

(using the

linearly

to a general

k

-form

\omega =f_{I}\,dx^{I},

where each of the components of the multi-index $I$ run over all the values in ${1, ..., n}$ . Note that whenever $i$ equals one of the components of the multi-index $I$ then $dx i \land dx I = 0$ (see

Exterior product

).

The definition of the exterior derivative in local coordinates follows from the preceding definition in terms of axioms. Indeed, with the $k$ -form $φ$ as defined above,

{\begin{aligned}d{\varphi }&=d\left(g\,dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\right)\\&=dg\wedge \left(dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\right)+g\,d\left(dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\right)\\&=dg\wedge dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}+g\sum _{p=1}^{k}(-1)^{p-1}\,dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{p-1}}\wedge d^{2}x^{i_{p}}\wedge dx^{i_{p+1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\\&=dg\wedge dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\\&={\frac {\partial g}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}\wedge dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\\\end{aligned}}

Here, we have interpreted $g$ as a $0$ -form, and then applied the properties of the exterior derivative.

This result extends directly to the general $k$ -form $ω$ as

d\omega ={\frac {\partial f_{I}}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}\wedge dx^{I}.

In particular, for a $1$ -form $ω$ , the components of $dω$ in

local coordinates

are

(d\omega )_{ij}=\partial _{i}\omega _{j}-\partial _{j}\omega _{i}.

Caution: There are two conventions regarding the meaning of $dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}$ . Most current authors^{[citation needed]} have the convention that

\left(dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\right)\left({\frac {\partial }{\partial x^{i_{1}}}},\ldots ,{\frac {\partial }{\partial x^{i_{k}}}}\right)=1.

while in older text like Kobayashi and Nomizu or Helgason

\left(dx^{i_{1}}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i_{k}}\right)\left({\frac {\partial }{\partial x^{i_{1}}}},\ldots ,{\frac {\partial }{\partial x^{i_{k}}}}\right)={\frac {1}{k!}}.

In terms of invariant formula

Alternatively, an explicit formula can be given ^[1] for the exterior derivative of a $k$ -form $ω$ , when paired with $k + 1$ arbitrary smooth vector fields $V 0, V 1, ..., V k$ :

d\omega (V_{0},\ldots ,V_{k})=\sum _{i}(-1)^{i}V_{i}(\omega (V_{0},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{i},\ldots ,V_{k}))+\sum _{i<j}(-1)^{i+j}\omega ([V_{i},V_{j}],V_{0},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{i},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{j},\ldots ,V_{k})

where $[V i, V j]$ denotes the Lie bracket and a hat denotes the omission of that element:

\omega (V_{0},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{i},\ldots ,V_{k})=\omega (V_{0},\ldots ,V_{i-1},V_{i+1},\ldots ,V_{k}).

In particular, when $ω$ is a $1$ -form we have that $dω (X, Y) = d X (ω (Y)) - d Y (ω (X)) - ω ([X, Y])$ .

Note: With the conventions of e.g., Kobayashi–Nomizu and Helgason the formula differs by a factor of $.mw-parser-output .sfrac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .sfrac.tion,.mw-parser-output .sfrac .tion{display:inline-block;vertical-align:-0.5em;font-size:85%;text-align:center}.mw-parser-output .sfrac .num{display:block;line-height:1em;margin:0.0em 0.1em;border-bottom:1px solid}.mw-parser-output .sfrac .den{display:block;line-height:1em;margin:0.1em 0.1em}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);clip-path:polygon(0px 0px,0px 0px,0px 0px);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}1/k + 1$ :

{\begin{aligned}d\omega (V_{0},\ldots ,V_{k})={}&{1 \over k+1}\sum _{i}(-1)^{i}\,V_{i}(\omega (V_{0},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{i},\ldots ,V_{k}))\\&{}+{1 \over k+1}\sum _{i<j}(-1)^{i+j}\omega ([V_{i},V_{j}],V_{0},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{i},\ldots ,{\widehat {V}}_{j},\ldots ,V_{k}).\end{aligned}}

Examples

Example 1. Consider $σ = u dx 1 \land dx 2$ over a $1$ -form basis $dx 1, ..., dx n$ for a scalar field $u$ . The exterior derivative is:

{\begin{aligned}d\sigma &=du\wedge dx^{1}\wedge dx^{2}\\&=\left(\sum _{i=1}^{n}{\frac {\partial u}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}\right)\wedge dx^{1}\wedge dx^{2}\\&=\sum _{i=3}^{n}\left({\frac {\partial u}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}\wedge dx^{1}\wedge dx^{2}\right)\end{aligned}}

The last formula, where summation starts at $i = 3$ , follows easily from the properties of the

exterior product

. Namely,

dx i \land dx i = 0

.

Example 2. Let $σ = u dx + v dy$ be a $1$ -form defined over $ℝ 2$ . By applying the above formula to each term (consider $x 1 = x$ and $x 2 = y$ ) we have the sum

{\begin{aligned}d\sigma &=\left(\sum _{i=1}^{2}{\frac {\partial u}{\partial x^{i}}}dx^{i}\wedge dx\right)+\left(\sum _{i=1}^{2}{\frac {\partial v}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}\wedge dy\right)\\&=\left({\frac {\partial {u}}{\partial {x}}}\,dx\wedge dx+{\frac {\partial {u}}{\partial {y}}}\,dy\wedge dx\right)+\left({\frac {\partial {v}}{\partial {x}}}\,dx\wedge dy+{\frac {\partial {v}}{\partial {y}}}\,dy\wedge dy\right)\\&=0-{\frac {\partial {u}}{\partial {y}}}\,dx\wedge dy+{\frac {\partial {v}}{\partial {x}}}\,dx\wedge dy+0\\&=\left({\frac {\partial {v}}{\partial {x}}}-{\frac {\partial {u}}{\partial {y}}}\right)\,dx\wedge dy\end{aligned}}

Stokes' theorem on manifolds

If $M$ is a compact smooth orientable $n$ -dimensional manifold with boundary, and $ω$ is an $(n - 1)$ -form on $M$ , then

the generalized form of Stokes' theorem

states that

\int _{M}d\omega =\int _{\partial {M}}\omega

Intuitively, if one thinks of $M$ as being divided into infinitesimal regions, and one adds the flux through the boundaries of all the regions, the interior boundaries all cancel out, leaving the total flux through the boundary of $M$ .

Further properties

Closed and exact forms

A $k$ -form $ω$ is called closed if $dω = 0$ ; closed forms are the kernel of $d$ . $ω$ is called exact if $ω = dα$ for some $(k - 1)$ -form $α$ ; exact forms are the image of $d$ . Because $d 2 = 0$ , every exact form is closed. The Poincaré lemma states that in a contractible region, the converse is true.

de Rham cohomology

Because the exterior derivative $d$ has the property that $d 2 = 0$ , it can be used as the

smooth manifolds, integration of forms gives a natural homomorphism from the de Rham cohomology to the singular cohomology over

ℝ

. The theorem of de Rham shows that this map is actually an isomorphism, a far-reaching generalization of the Poincaré lemma. As suggested by the generalized Stokes' theorem, the exterior derivative is the "dual" of the boundary map

on singular simplices.

Naturality

The exterior derivative is natural in the technical sense: if $f : M \to N$ is a smooth map and $Ω k$ is the contravariant smooth functor that assigns to each manifold the space of $k$ -forms on the manifold, then the following diagram commutes

so $d (f * ω) = f * dω$ , where $f *$ denotes the pullback of $f$ . This follows from that $f * ω (\cdot)$ , by definition, is $ω (f * (\cdot))$ , $f *$ being the pushforward of $f$ . Thus $d$ is a natural transformation from $Ω k$ to $Ω k +1$ .

Exterior derivative in vector calculus

Most vector calculus operators are special cases of, or have close relationships to, the notion of exterior differentiation.

Gradient

A

smooth function

f : M \to ℝ

on a real differentiable manifold

M

is a

0

-form. The exterior derivative of this

0

-form is the

1

-form

df

.

When an inner product $⟨\cdot,\cdot⟩$ is defined, the gradient $\nabla f$ of a function $f$ is defined as the unique vector in $V$ such that its inner product with any element of $V$ is the directional derivative of $f$ along the vector, that is such that

\langle \nabla f,\cdot \rangle =df=\sum _{i=1}^{n}{\frac {\partial f}{\partial x^{i}}}\,dx^{i}.

That is,

\nabla f=(df)^{\sharp }=\sum _{i=1}^{n}{\frac {\partial f}{\partial x^{i}}}\,\left(dx^{i}\right)^{\sharp },

where $♯$ denotes the musical isomorphism $♯ : V * \to V$ mentioned earlier that is induced by the inner product.

The $1$ -form $df$ is a section of the cotangent bundle, that gives a local linear approximation to $f$ in the cotangent space at each point.

Divergence

A vector field $V = (v 1, v 2, ..., v n)$ on $ℝ n$ has a corresponding $(n - 1)$ -form

{\begin{aligned}\omega _{V}&=v_{1}\left(dx^{2}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{n}\right)-v_{2}\left(dx^{1}\wedge dx^{3}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{n}\right)+\cdots +(-1)^{n-1}v_{n}\left(dx^{1}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{n-1}\right)\\&=\sum _{i=1}^{n}(-1)^{(i-1)}v_{i}\left(dx^{1}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{i-1}\wedge {\widehat {dx^{i}}}\wedge dx^{i+1}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{n}\right)\end{aligned}}

where ${\widehat {dx^{i}}}$ denotes the omission of that element.

(For instance, when $n = 3$ , i.e. in three-dimensional space, the $2$ -form $ω V$ is locally the

scalar triple product with

V

.) The integral of

ω V

over a hypersurface is the flux

of

V

over that hypersurface.

The exterior derivative of this $(n - 1)$ -form is the $n$ -form

d\omega _{V}=\operatorname {div} V\left(dx^{1}\wedge dx^{2}\wedge \cdots \wedge dx^{n}\right).

Curl

A vector field $V$ on $ℝ n$ also has a corresponding $1$ -form

\eta _{V}=v_{1}\,dx^{1}+v_{2}\,dx^{2}+\cdots +v_{n}\,dx^{n}.

Locally, $η V$ is the

work

done against

- V

along that path.

When $n = 3$ , in three-dimensional space, the exterior derivative of the $1$ -form $η V$ is the $2$ -form

d\eta _{V}=\omega _{\operatorname {curl} V}.

Invariant formulations of operators in vector calculus

The standard vector calculus operators can be generalized for any pseudo-Riemannian manifold, and written in coordinate-free notation as follows:

{\begin{array}{rcccl}\operatorname {grad} f&\equiv &\nabla f&=&\left(df\right)^{\sharp }\\\operatorname {div} F&\equiv &\nabla \cdot F&=&{\star d{\star }{\mathord {\left(F^{\flat }\right)}}}\\\operatorname {curl} F&\equiv &\nabla \times F&=&\left({\star }d{\mathord {\left(F^{\flat }\right)}}\right)^{\sharp }\\\Delta f&\equiv &\nabla ^{2}f&=&{\star }d{\star }df\\&&\nabla ^{2}F&=&\left(d{\star }d{\star }{\mathord {\left(F^{\flat }\right)}}-{\star }d{\star }d{\mathord {\left(F^{\flat }\right)}}\right)^{\sharp },\\\end{array}}

where $⋆$ is the

Hodge star operator,

♭

and

♯

are the musical isomorphisms,

f

is a scalar field and

F

is a vector field

.

Note that the expression for $curl$ requires $♯$ to act on $⋆ d (F ♭)$ , which is a form of degree $n - 2$ . A natural generalization of $♯$ to $k$ -forms of arbitrary degree allows this expression to make sense for any $n$ .

Notes

^ Spivak(1970), p 7-18, Th. 13

References

JFM 30.0313.04
. Retrieved 2 Feb 2016.

Conlon, Lawrence (2001). Differentiable manifolds. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser. p. 239.
ISBN 0-8176-4134-3
.

Darling, R. W. R. (1994). Differential forms and connections. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 35.
ISBN 0-521-46800-0
.

Flanders, Harley (1989). Differential forms with applications to the physical sciences. New York: Dover Publications. p. 20.
ISBN 0-486-66169-5
.

Loomis, Lynn H.; Sternberg, Shlomo (1989). Advanced Calculus. Boston: Jones and Bartlett. pp. 304–473 (ch. 7–11).
ISBN 0-486-66169-5
.

Ramanan, S. (2005). Global calculus. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. p. 54.
ISBN 0-8218-3702-8
.

ISBN 9780805390216
.

ISBN 0-914098-00-4

Warner, Frank W. (1983), Foundations of differentiable manifolds and Lie groups, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 94, Springer,
ISBN 0-387-90894-3

External links

Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "The derivative isn't what you think it is". Aleph Zero. November 3, 2020 – via YouTube.

[1] Spivak(1970), p 7-18, Th. 13

[1]

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Definition

In terms of axioms

In terms of local coordinates

In terms of invariant formula

Examples

Stokes' theorem on manifolds

Further properties

Closed and exact forms

de Rham cohomology

Naturality

Exterior derivative in vector calculus

Gradient

Divergence

Curl

Invariant formulations of operators in vector calculus

See also

Notes

References

External links