Tensor

In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects associated with a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors, including scalars and vectors (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product. Tensors are defined independent of any basis, although they are often referred to by their components in a basis related to a particular coordinate system; those components form an array, which can be thought of as a high-dimensional matrix. Tensors have become important in physics, because they provide a concise mathematical framework for formulating and solving physics problems in areas such as mechanics (stress, elasticity, quantum mechanics, fluid mechanics, moment of inertia, etc.), electrodynamics (electromagnetic tensor, Maxwell tensor, permittivity, magnetic susceptibility, etc.), and general relativity (stress–energy tensor, curvature tensor, etc.). In applications, it is common to study situations in which a different tensor can occur at each point of an object. For example, the stress within an object may vary from one location to another. A family of tensors, that vary across space in this way, is a tensor field.