| Abstract from DBPedia | In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors, including scalars and vectors (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product. Tensors are defined independent of any basis, although they are often referred to by their components in a basis related to a particular coordinate system. Tensors have become important in physics because they provide a concise mathematical framework for formulating and solving physics problems in areas such as mechanics (stress, elasticity, fluid mechanics, moment of inertia, ...), electrodynamics (electromagnetic tensor, Maxwell tensor, permittivity, magnetic susceptibility, ...), general relativity (stress–energy tensor, curvature tensor, ...) and others. In applications, it is common to study situations in which a different tensor can occur at each point of an object; for example the stress within an object may vary from one location to another. This leads to the concept of a tensor field. In some areas, tensor fields are so ubiquitous that they are often simply called "tensors". Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro popularised tensors in 1900 – continuing the earlier work of Bernhard Riemann and Elwin Bruno Christoffel and others – as part of the absolute differential calculus. The concept enabled an alternative formulation of the intrinsic differential geometry of a manifold in the form of the Riemann curvature tensor.テンソル（英: tensor, 独: Tensor）とは、線形的な量または線形的な幾何概念を一般化したもので、基底を選べば、多次元の配列として表現できるようなものである。しかし、テンソル自身は、特定の座標系によらないで定まる対象である。個々のテンソルについて、対応する量を記述するのに必要な配列の添字の組の数は、そのテンソルの階数とよばれる。 例えば、質量や温度などのスカラー量は階数0のテンソルだと理解される。同様にして力や運動量などのベクトル的な量は階数1のテンソルであり、力や加速度ベクトルの間の異方的な関係などをあらわす線型変換は階数2のテンソルで表される。 物理学や工学においてしばしば「テンソル」と呼ばれているものは、実際には位置や時刻を引数としテンソル量を返す関数である「テンソル場」であることに注意しなければならない。いずれにせよテンソル場の理解のためにはテンソルそのものの概念の理解が不可欠である。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tensor) |
