A fluid generalization of membranes

Abstract

In a certain sense a perfect fluid is a generalization of a point particle. This leads to the question as to what is the corresponding generalization for extended objects. Here the lagrangian formulation of a perfect fluid is much generalized by replacing the product of the co-moving vector which is a first fundamental form by higher dimensional first fundamental forms; this has as a particular example a fluid which is a classical generalization of a membrane; however there is as yet no indication of any relationship between their quantum theories. © 2011 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Wien.