English

A formalism of Gravitation based on a Physical Field Strength

General Physics 2025-12-09 v1

Abstract

We propose a reformulation of gravitation in which the gravitational interaction is treated as a genuine force rather than an inertial effect arising from spacetime geometry. Within this framework, the difference between the affine connection and a flat reference connection defines a tensor Kμαβ\mathrm{K}^\mu{}_{\alpha\beta}, identified as the gravitational field strength. This object cannot be eliminated by coordinate transformations, demonstrating that gravity possesses true physical degrees of freedom. The formalism introduces vector fields ξaμ\xi_a{}^\mu that extend the notion of infinitesimal translations to curved spacetime and naturally yield a gauge-invariant field strength Fξaμν\mathfrak{F}^{\xi a}{}_{\mu\nu}. The dynamics of the gravitational field are governed by a Lagrangian of Yang--Mills type with an additional scalar degree of freedom ϕ2\phi^{2}, corresponding to the Newtonian potential. In the limit of vanishing gravitational coupling g0\mathfrak{g}\to0, the theory reduces to General Relativity, while for nonzero g\mathfrak{g} it constitutes an SU(2)×U(1)\mathrm{SU(2)\times U(1)} gauge theory of gravity. The framework provides a unified description in which dark energy emerges as the self-interaction energy of the ϕ\phi field, and dark-matter-like effects arise from the extended gravitational degrees of freedom. This formulation offers a consistent bridge between classical and quantum descriptions of gravity and clarifies the conceptual foundations of the gravitational interaction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.06050,
  title  = {A formalism of Gravitation based on a Physical Field Strength},
  author = {L. Horoto and F. G. Scholtz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.06050},
  year   = {2025}
}