MatF3 – Dimensions of tensors May 14, 2020 Peter Daniel Johannsen

Suppose we are in SO(N ) and would like to figure out the dimension, d , of the tensor T i1 ,i2 ,...,in which has n indices.

Antisymmetric

If the tensor is antisymmetric then there may be no repeated indices. There are N possibilities for the first index, N − 1
possibilities for the second etc. Thus

N!
d ∝ N (N − 1)(N − 2) · · · (N − h + 1) = (1)
(N − n)!

however the antisymmetry of the tensor gives us additional constraints. Because any tensor whose indices are a permu-
tation of the indices, {i1 , i2 , . . . , in }, will not be independent of T i1 ,i2 ,...,in . Or more exactly

T i1 ,i2 ,...,in = (−1)|σ| T σ(i1 ),σ(i2 ),...,σ(in ) (2)

What this says is that given any "set" of indices {i1 , i2 , . . . , in } we already know what the element has the indices
{σ(i1 ), σ(i2 ), . . . , σ(in )} is; merely by using Equation 2. Note that (−1)|σ| is one if the permutation is even and negative
one if the permutation is odd. Thus the question is, how often can we permute n distinct indices? Or asked differently,
how many elements does the permutation group, Sn , have? As we know from previously |Sn | = n!, therefore there are
n! additional constraints implying that

N!  
N
d= = (3)
n!(N − n)! n

Symmetric

Here it is useful to think of the indices the way we thought about the Einstein Solid in thermodynamics. That is, we
have n indices that can take N different values, hence we have n indices that are divided by N −1 divisions, for example:

{i1 , i2 , · · · , in } = {4, 2, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 1, 3, 4, 4, · · · } ⇝ 11|222|3|44444| · · · ⇝ ◦ ◦ | ◦ ◦ ◦ | ◦ | ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ | · · · (4)

Due to the symmetry the order in which indices appear does not matter, but rather how often each number appears in
the string of indices, therefore we can represent the problem with circles and dividers. Hence we ask how many times
can we permute N − 1 dividers in a string of n + N − 1 elements, that either can be a circle or a divider.

Side 1