Noether and Belinfante stress-energy tensors for theories with arbitrary Lagrangians of tensor fields

Abstract

We investigate the connection between stress-energy tensor (SET) arising from Noether's theorem and Belinfante SET which can be obtained as a right-hand side of the Einstein's equation in the flat metric limit. This question is studied in the wide class of Poincar\`e-invariant field theories with actions which depend on the tensor fields of arbitrary rank and their derivatives of arbitrary order. For this class we derive the relation between these SET and present the exact expression for the difference between them. We also show that the difference between corresponding integrals of motion can be expressed as a surface integral over 2-dimensinal infinitely remote surface.