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Chandrasekhar potential energy tensor
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In astrophysics, Chandrasekhar potential energy tensor provides the gravitational potential of a body due to its own gravity created by the distribution of matter across the body, named after the Indian American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.[1][2][3] The Chandrasekhar tensor is a generalization of potential energy in other words, the trace of the Chandrasekhar tensor provides the potential energy of the body.
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Definition
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The Chandrasekhar potential energy tensor is defined as
where
where
- is the Gravitational constant
- is the self-gravitating potential from Newton's law of gravity
- is the generalized version of
- is the matter density distribution
- is the volume of the body
It is evident that is a symmetric tensor from its definition. The trace of the Chandrasekhar tensor is nothing but the potential energy .
Hence Chandrasekhar tensor can be viewed as the generalization of potential energy.[4]
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Chandrasekhar's Proof
Consider a matter of volume with density . Thus
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Chandrasekhar tensor in terms of scalar potential
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The scalar potential is defined as
then Chandrasekhar[5] proves that
Setting we get , taking Laplacian again, we get .
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See also
References
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