[Physics] Antisymmetric part of a tensor with Levi-Civita symbol

notationtensor-calculus

How to write the antisymmetric part of a tensor in general? It has been asked here but I want to write it using the Levi Civita symbol. I have thought of:

$$A^{\mu_1} A^{\mu_2} – A^{\mu_2} A^{\mu_1} = A^{[\mu_1 \mu_2]} = \epsilon_{\alpha \beta} A^{\mu_{\alpha} \mu_{\beta}}$$

but I don't know if this is the best way. (Of course I want this for more than 2 indices).

Best Answer

The basic problem is that in $n$ dimensions you have $n$ indices on your orientation tensor so you have to map a $[q, 0]$-tensor to a $[0, n-q]$-tensor with one application.

You can probably get it with two, that is in $n$ dimensions we probably would have $$A^{[ab]} = \frac12 A^{ab} - \frac12 A^{ba} \propto \epsilon^{abcd\dots p} ~\epsilon_{cd\dots pqr}~A^{qr}$$ but there is a reason that this is a “weird thing to do” and it's that you can antisymmetrize in a non-orientable space so these notions must be formally separate, and we are here just describing a property that the orientation tensor should have when it exists.