Introduction

Considering a three-dimensional space.

where is the angle between the two vectors,

measured from x to y. Since cos is an even
function, the scalar product is commutative:

Vector notation: x, (x1, x2, x3), xi (where i = 1, 2,

3).
Length: x x x x
Any three non-coplanar vectors form a base, or
basis, in which an arbitrary vector may be
decomposed or expanded. But is often most
convenient to choose the basis vectors
perpendicular to each other. In this case the basis
is called orthogonal. A particular useful set of
basis vectors is the Cartesian basis (e1, e2, e3)
consisting of three mutually orthogonal vectors of
unit length which have the same direction at all
points in space. Such a set of vectors is called
orthonormal, because the vectors are orthogonal
to each other and are normalized (have unit
length).
The basis (or coordinate system) in Fig. 1 is righthanded, i.e., if the fingers of the right hand are
extended along the positive x1-axis and then
curled toward the positive x2-axis, the thumb will
point in the positive x3-direction. If any one of the
basis vectors is reversed, we have a left-handed
orthogonal basis.

xy y x .
Moreover, the scalar product is distributive with
respect to addition:
x y z x y x z .

If x y 0 , the two vectors are perpendicular.

In particular, for Cartesian basis vector, we have
e i e j ij ,

where ij is the Kronecker delta defined by

1 if i j
.
0 if i j

ij

If we expand two arbitrary vectors, x and y, in

terms of the Cartesian basis,
3

x x1e1 x2 e 2 x3e 3 xi e i ,
i 1
3

y y1e1 y 2 e 2 y3e 3 yi e i ,
i 1

then

3
3

x y xi e i yi e i
i 1
i 1

x y e

i , j 1

j i

ej

x y

i , j 1

ij

xi yi
i

Figure 1: Right-handed Cartesian basis or coordinate system.

An arbitrary vector may be expressed in terms of

this Cartesian basis as x = x1e1 + x2e2 + x3e3.
The scalar product (also inner or dot product) of
two vectors x and y is the real number defined by
the equation:

x y x y cos ,

Einstein summation notation

Einstein, in working with vectors and tensors,
noticed that whenever there was a summation
over a given subscript (or superscript), that
subscript appeared twice in the summed
expression, and vice versa. Thus one could simply
omit the redundant summation signs, interpreting
an expression like xiyi to mean summation over
the repeated subscript from 1 to, in our case, 3. If
there are two distinct repeated subscripts, two

summations are implied, and so on. In terms of

this convention we have, for example,
x xi e i ,
x y xi y j ij xi yi x j y j ,
x e i x j e j e i x j ij xi .