Calculating Killing vectors of Schwarzschild metric

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SUMMARY

The discussion focuses on calculating the Killing vectors of the Schwarzschild metric, specifically referencing exercise 7.10(e) from Robert Scott's manual accompanying Schutz's textbook. The three Killing vector fields associated with rotational invariance about the Cartesian axes are identified, and their transformation into spherical coordinates is detailed. The user initially struggles to determine the components ##S^x, S^z## and ##T^x, T^z## but ultimately concludes that ##S^x=z, S^z=-x## and identifies a typo in the text regarding ##T^y##.

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  • Understanding of Killing vectors in differential geometry
  • Familiarity with the Schwarzschild metric
  • Knowledge of spherical and Cartesian coordinate transformations
  • Basic concepts of tensor calculus
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I am trying to understand the solution to exercise 7.10(e) on pages 175-176 of Robert Scott's student's manual to Schutz's textbook.

He writes the following:
Table 7.1 rows four, five and six, lists the three Killing vector fields associated with invariance for rotations about the three spatial Cartesian axes.
Because Schwarzschild also has spherical symmetry it enjoys the same Killing vector fields.
We can transform these into the spherical coordinates of (ii) using relations in Appendix B giving:
$$\vec{Q}=\vec{e_t}$$
$$\vec{R}=\vec{e_\phi}$$
$$\vec{S}=\bigg(\frac{\partial \theta}{\partial x} S^x +\frac{\partial \theta}{\partial z} S^z\bigg)\vec{e_\theta}+\bigg(\frac{\partial \phi}{\partial x} S^x+\frac{\partial \phi}{\partial z} S^z\bigg)\vec{e_\phi}=\cos \phi \vec{e_\theta}-\cot \theta \sin \phi \vec{e_\phi}$$
$$\vec{T}=\bigg(\frac{\partial \theta}{\partial x} T^x +\frac{\partial \theta}{\partial z} T^z\bigg)\vec{e_\theta}+\bigg(\frac{\partial \phi}{\partial x} T^x+\frac{\partial \phi}{\partial z} T^z\bigg)\vec{e_\phi}=\sin \phi \vec{e_\theta}-\cot \theta \cos \phi \vec{e_\phi}$$

I don't understand how to find ##S^x, S^z## or ##T^x,T^z## from the metric or from the cartesian representation of the rotation vectors?
The derivatives are calculated with spherical coordinates which I understand how to achieve them.

Any help?
 
Last edited:
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Ok, I believe I found my answer: ##S^x=z , S^z=-x## and ##T^x=0, T^z=-y##.
 
There's typo in the text, it should be ##T^y=z , T^z=-y##.
 

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