English

On the gravitational angular momentum of rotating sources

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

The gravitational energy-momentum and angular momentum satisfy the algebra of the Poincare group in the full phase space of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity. The expression for the gravitational energy-momentum may be written as a surface integral in the three-dimensional spacelike hypersurface, whereas the definition for the angular momentum is given by a volume integral. It turns out that in practical calculations of the angular momentum of the gravitational field generated by localized sources like rotating neutron stars, the volume integral reduces to a surface integral, and the calculations can be easily carried out. Similar to previous investigations in the literature, we show that the total angular momentum is finite provided a certain asymptotic behaviour is verified. We discuss the dependence of the gravitational angular momentum on the frame, and argue that it is a measure of the dragging of inertial frames.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.1934,
  title  = {On the gravitational angular momentum of rotating sources},
  author = {J. W. Maluf and S. C. Ulhoa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.1934},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

19 pages, accepted by General Relativity and Gravitation

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:29:34.936Z