Bryce DeWitt's Lectures on Gravitation pp 63-70 | Cite as
The Free Particle: Geodesics
Chapter
First Online:
Abstract
Whether maximizing or minimizing something, the important point is that the world line of a particle is the solution of a variational problem in which a certain functional of the trajectory is extremized. In physics, it is conventional to call this functional the action.
Keywords
Curvature Tensor Proper Time Free Particle Isometry Group Covariant Variation
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© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011