Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
An identity of fundamental interest in General Relativity is the breakup or ‘decomposition’ of the scalar curvature density into an ordinary divergence in addition to a term constructed solely from the metric tensor and its first derivative. It is proven that this identity is the most elementary example of an identity satisfied by all members of a particularly important class of Riemannian invariants. For a subset of these invariants, the decomposition identity undergoes a simplification that connects this material with some problems of current research interest.