# Brackets around indices change their size

My expression is

\nabla^{(0)}_{\left(a\right|}\nabla^{(0)}_{c}\bar{h}_{\left|b\right)}^c


which produces on my machine

Clearly the indices with brackets around are larger than the non-bracketed ones. I would like all of them to have the same size. What is the best way of doing that?

• \left and \right only do evil in those places. – egreg Aug 15 '17 at 15:50
• @egreg But with the name "Thunder\Biggi", he is already on the right track. – Steven B. Segletes Aug 15 '17 at 16:03

Use \vphantoms for the lone scripts, so as to give them the same vertical footprint as a paren. Also, in a case like this, the \left...\right additions are not helpful and just throw confusion on the syntax. I have removed them.

Per egreg's suggestion, the use of | was replaced with the \rvert and \lvert, respectively, from the amsmath package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
$\nabla^{(0)}_{(a\rvert}\nabla^{(0)}_{ \vphantom{(} c}\bar{h}_{\lvert b)}^{\vphantom{)} c}$
\end{document}


• So the \vphantom basically makes the bracket invisible? – ThunderBiggi Aug 15 '17 at 15:45
• @ThunderBiggi A \phantom would place its [full-width] argument invisibly (i.e., reserve a vertical and horizontal space), whereas a \vphantom places a zero-width but full-height version of the invisible argument (reserves only a vertical space). – Steven B. Segletes Aug 15 '17 at 15:52
• It should be \rvert in the first subscript and \lvert in the second one (needs amsmath). – egreg Aug 15 '17 at 16:07
• @egreg I didn't know about them - they seem to be slightly smaller - neat! – ThunderBiggi Aug 15 '17 at 16:22