English

Pound-Rebka experiment and torsion in the Schwarzschild spacetime

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-09-02 v2

Abstract

We develop some ideas discussed by E. Schucking [arXiv:0803.4128] concerning the geometry of the gravitational field. First, we address the concept according to which the gravitational acceleration is a manifestation of the spacetime torsion, not of the curvature tensor. It is possible to show that there are situations in which the geodesic acceleration of a particle may acquire arbitrary values, whereas the curvature tensor approaches zero. We conclude that the spacetime curvature does not affect the geodesic acceleration. Then we consider the the Pound-Rebka experiment, which relates the time interval Δτ1\Delta \tau_1 of two light signals emitted at a position r1r_1, to the time interval Δτ2\Delta \tau_2 of the signals received at a position r2r_2, in a Schwarzschild type gravitational field. The experiment is determined by four spacetime events. The infinitesimal vectors formed by these events do not form a parallelogram in the (t,r) plane. The failure in the closure of the parallelogram implies that the spacetime has torsion. We find the explicit form of the torsion tensor that explains the nonclosure of the parallelogram.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0903.2565,
  title  = {Pound-Rebka experiment and torsion in the Schwarzschild spacetime},
  author = {J. W. Maluf and S. C. Ulhoa and F. F. Faria},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.2565},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

16 pages, two figures, one typo fixed, one paragraph added in section 5