Critical Tidal Currents in General Relativity
Abstract
Relativistic tidal equations are formulated with respect to the rest frame of a central gravitational source and their solutions are studied. The existence of certain relativistic critical tidal currents are thereby elucidated. Specifically, observers that are spatially at rest in the exterior Kerr spacetime are considered in detail; in effect, these fiducial observers define the rest frame of the Kerr source. The general tidal equations for the free motion of test particles are worked out with respect to the Kerr background. The analytic solutions of these equations are investigated and the existence of a tidal acceleration mechanism is emphasized.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2007.12023,
title = {Critical Tidal Currents in General Relativity},
author = {Bahram Mashhoon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.12023},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
26 pages; v2: minor improvements, invited contribution to appear in Universe; v3: two errant numerical coefficients in equation (15) corrected. These errors propagated to Section IV; hence, equations (35), (38), (40), (43), (44), (46), (47), (61) and (62) have also been corrected, main results and conclusions remain unchanged