English

Transferring Energy in General Relativity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2018-08-08 v2

Abstract

A problem in general relativity is, how the gravitational field can transfer energy and momentum between different distant places. The issue is that matter stress tensor is locally conserved, with no explicit interaction with the free gravitational field, which is represented by the Weyl tensor. In this paper we explicitly construct an interaction tensor for free gravity and matter, that depicts the interplay between the energy momentum tensor of free gravity, which is taken to be the symmetric two index square root of Bell-Robinson tensor, and matter. This is examined both in the case of Coulomb-like Petrov type D spacetimes and radiation like Petrov type N spacetimes, where a unique square root exists. The first case generalises the Tweedledum and Tweedledee thought experiment regarding gravitational induction in Newtonian gravity to general relativistic scenarios, and the second gives a proposal for how gravitational radiation can transfer energy and momentum between distant objects separated by a vacuum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.00927,
  title  = {Transferring Energy in General Relativity},
  author = {Rituparno Goswami and George F. R. Ellis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.00927},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Small changes, Several references added, importance of reference [19] highlighted

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:43:07.558Z