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.
The Chandrasekhar potential energy tensor is defined as where where It is evident that
is a symmetric tensor from its definition.
The trace of the Chandrasekhar tensor
Hence Chandrasekhar tensor can be viewed as the generalization of potential energy.
Thus The scalar potential is defined as then Chandrasekhar[5] proves that Setting