Operations on structures | Bilinear maps | Operations on vectors
Tensor product
In mathematics, the tensor product of two vector spaces V and W (over the same field) is a vector space to which is associated a bilinear map that maps a pair to an element of denoted An element of the form is called the tensor product of v and w. An element of is a tensor, and the tensor product of two vectors is sometimes called an elementary tensor or a decomposable tensor. The elementary tensors span in the sense that every element of is a sum of elementary tensors. If bases are given for V and W, a basis of is formed by all tensor products of a basis element of V and a basis element of W. The tensor product of two vector spaces captures the properties of all bilinear maps in the sense that a bilinear map from into another vector space Z factors uniquely through a linear map (see Universal property). Tensor products are used in many application areas, including physics and engineering. For example, in general relativity, the gravitational field is described through the metric tensor, which is a vector field of tensors, one at each point of the space-time manifold, and each belonging to the tensor product with itself of the cotangent space at the point. (Wikipedia).
