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I'm trying to follow an article by H. Ellis (1973), where he developed the first ever metric of a traversable Wormhole (more info here).
In pages 105-106 (the end of the 3rd page in the linked file above, and the start of the 4th) he calculates the "connection forms" $\omega{}_\kappa{}^\mu$. (Warning: This is an old paper, with different notations then used today in GR.)

What is the relation between the Connection Forms $\omega{}_\kappa{}^\mu$ and the more familiar Affine Connection $\Gamma^{\sigma}_{\mu\nu}$?

I know that there is a Wikipedia article about connection Forms, but it's written very technically, and using a notation more commonly used by mathematicians then by physicists.

P.S. Is there anything here that relates to the formalism of Cartan of GR? I just finished my GR course and we didn't have enough time to learn it properly :(

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Short version : ${\omega_\kappa}^\mu$ is a matrix of (dual) vectors, and it is basically identical to the Christoffel symbol, via each such vector being

\begin{equation} {\omega_\kappa}^\mu = ({\Gamma^\mu}_{\kappa 0}, {\Gamma^\mu}_{\kappa 1}, \ldots) \end{equation}

In that paper in particular, they use the dual basis $\{ \omega^\nu \}$, so that

\begin{equation} {\omega_\kappa}^\mu = {\Gamma^\mu}_{\kappa 0} \omega^0 + {\Gamma^\mu}_{\kappa 1} \omega^1 + \ldots \end{equation}

Although please note, that basis may not be a coordinate basis, so it should be more exactly

\begin{equation} {\omega_\kappa}^\mu = {\Gamma^\mu}_{\kappa 0} e^0_{\nu}\omega^\nu + {\Gamma^\mu}_{\kappa 1} e^1_{\nu} \omega^\nu + \ldots \end{equation}

Long version : The covariant derivative can be seen as a map from the tangent bundle to the product of the tangent bundle with the exterior bundle of $1$-forms,

\begin{eqnarray} \nabla : TM &\to& TM \otimes \Omega^1 M\\ X &\mapsto& \nabla X \end{eqnarray}

That way, we can define the application of a vector to the covariant derivative, $\nabla_Y$X, as an application of that $1$-form to $\nabla_X$, ie $[\nabla X](Y) = \nabla_Y X$.

Under this form, we can in particular define, given a function $f$ and a vector field $v$,

\begin{eqnarray} \nabla(fv) = df \otimes v + f \nabla v \end{eqnarray}

with the application

\begin{eqnarray} [\nabla(fv)](Y) = df(Y) \otimes v + f [\nabla v] (Y) \end{eqnarray}

We can always decompose the vector on some frame field $\{ e_\mu \}$, so that

\begin{eqnarray} v = v^\mu e_\mu \end{eqnarray}

The components are then just a set of four scalar functions. We then have

\begin{eqnarray} \nabla(v^\mu e_\mu) = dv^\mu \otimes e_\mu + v^\mu \nabla e_\mu \end{eqnarray}

$\nabla e_\mu$ is once again a covariant derivative, so it will be equal to some object in $TM \otimes \Omega^1 M$. That object is the connection form. The vector part of this object can itself be decomposed in components

\begin{eqnarray} \nabla e_\mu = \omega_\mu^\nu e_\nu \end{eqnarray}

Each component here $\omega_\mu^\nu$ is a $1$-form. It can be decomposed further in a slightly more obvious vector/$1$-form decomposition by considering the dual basis $\theta^\mu$, which is the basis of $1$-forms such that $\theta^\mu(e_\nu) = \delta^\mu_\nu$ :

\begin{eqnarray} \omega_\mu^\nu e_\nu &=& (\omega_\mu^\nu)_\sigma e_\nu \otimes \theta^\sigma \end{eqnarray}

In that decomposition, this is basically the Christoffel symbol. Just apply a vector $Y = Y^\alpha e_\alpha$ and apply linearity and the Leibniz rule to it to see that :

\begin{eqnarray} [\nabla(X^\mu e_\mu)](Y^\alpha e_\alpha) &=& dX^\mu(Y^\alpha e_\alpha) \otimes e_\mu + X^\mu [\nabla e_\mu](Y^\alpha e_\alpha)\\ &=& Y^\alpha \left[dX^\mu(e_\alpha) \otimes e_\mu + X^\mu (\omega_\mu^\nu)_\sigma e_\nu \otimes [\theta^\sigma](e_\alpha)\right]\\ &=& Y^\alpha \left[\partial_\alpha X^\mu e_\mu + X^\mu (\omega_\mu^\nu)_\sigma e_\nu \delta^\sigma_\alpha\right]\\ &=& Y^\alpha \left[\partial_\alpha X^\mu e_\mu + X^\mu (\omega_\mu^\nu)_\alpha e_\nu \right] \end{eqnarray}

You will recognize the appropriate form of the covariant derivative, so that

\begin{eqnarray} (\omega_\mu^\nu)_\alpha = {\Gamma^\nu}_{\mu\alpha} \end{eqnarray}

The link between the two is then that for any two components $\mu, \nu$, the connection form is a $1$-form equal to

\begin{eqnarray} \omega_\mu^\nu = {\Gamma^\nu}_{\mu\alpha} \theta^\alpha \end{eqnarray}

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  • $\begingroup$ I was starting to get lost in the mathematics, but the short answer helped a lot. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Yoav Zack
    Commented Mar 30, 2020 at 12:12

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