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Which textbook of differerntial geometry will have these formulas about conformal transformation? $$\tilde g_{ij} = e^{2\varphi}g_{ij}$$ $$\tilde \Gamma^k{}_{ij} = \Gamma^k{}_{ij}+ \delta^k_i\partial_j\varphi + \delta^k_j\partial_i\varphi-g_{ij}\nabla^k\varphi $$ $$\tilde R_{ijkl} = e^{2\varphi}\left( R_{ijkl} - \left[ g {~\wedge\!\!\!\!\!\!\bigcirc~} \left( \nabla\partial\varphi - \partial\varphi\partial\varphi + \frac{1}{2}\|\nabla\varphi\|^2g \right)\right]_{ijkl} \right)$$ $$\tilde R = e^{-2\varphi}\left[R + \frac{4(n-1)}{(n-2)}e^{-(n-2)\varphi/2}\triangle\left( e^{(n-2)\varphi/2} \right) \right] $$

I've read many textbooks about differential geometry, such as Do Carmo, Kobayshi, Novikov and so on. But I never found these formulas. Who can give me a reference about these formulas. Thanks!

Yuri Vyatkin
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346699
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  • I'd imagine one of the five Spivak tomes would contain this... If not, then I vote against the great American diff geom text! –  Apr 20 '14 at 06:10
  • @5space I also have not found these formulas in Spivak's textbooks! – 346699 Apr 20 '14 at 06:21
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    Crossposted to http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/109181/2451 – Qmechanic Apr 20 '14 at 06:24
  • There is a book called Conformal Differential Geometry and its Generalizations by Akivis, et al. Available in google preview. (I don't know if it's in there. Just saw the book upon google search) –  Apr 20 '14 at 06:24
  • Yes, Akivis and Goldberg do that, see Chapter 4, but it is not too easy to translate their their notation to the form in which the question is asked. (They work in the moving frame approach). – Yuri Vyatkin Apr 20 '14 at 07:27

1 Answers1

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It was a problem for me too when I started learning conformal differential geometry in 2008. As I prefer to learn from openly available sources even though our University has an excellent library within a minute of walk, some of my references will be links to such online resources.

My first encounter with the proof of the conformal transformation of the Christoffel symbols occurred in Jan Slovak's dissertation "Natural Operators on Conformal manifolds", see here.

Later I found a nice exercise (Problem 6.11.8 on p. 296 in Springer 2009 edition) with a solution in P.M. Gadea and J. Munos Masqué "Analysis and Algebra on Differentiable Manifolds: A Workbook for Students and Teachers", not freely available but highly recommended :-) This explained a lot to me, however the other things were still difficult to master.

In an old book "Conformal Geometry" edited by R.Kulkarni and U.Pinkall, Vieweg 1988 Bonn, I found a lot of illuminating facts and examples, including these formulas. Especially see J.Lafontaine "Conformal Geometry from the Riemannian Viewpoint", pp. 65-92.

Later I found that there are many texts where one can find all sort of proofs of these identities. Professionals deem them elementary and usually refer to A.Besse's "Einstein manifolds", Theorem 1.159, p.58.

If I were asked now what to read in order to learn these transformation formulas I would recommend Jeff Viaclovsky's lectures "Math 865, Topics in Riemannian Geometry" that you can find here. Lecture 20 (= Chapter 21) on p.78 there gives detailed calculations.

(Reading Spivak's "Comprehensive..." albeit extremely useful was a daunting endeavor for me. )

Remark. This sort of questions have been asked already a few times (not reference requests but directly), so I gave some answers, see here and here.

Yuri Vyatkin
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