English

Weak second Bianchi identity for static, spherically symmetric spacetimes with timelike singularities

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2021-08-24 v3 Mathematical Physics Analysis of PDEs Differential Geometry math.MP

Abstract

The (twice-contracted) second Bianchi identity is a differential curvature identity that holds on any smooth manifold with a metric. In the case when such a metric is Lorentzian and solves Einstein's equations with an (in this case inevitably smooth) energy-momentum-stress tensor of a "matter field" as the source of spacetime curvature, this identity implies the physical laws of energy and momentum conservation for the "matter field". The present work inquires into whether such a Bianchi identity can still hold in a weak sense for spacetimes with curvature singularities associated with timelike singularities in the "matter field". Sufficient conditions that establish a distributional version of the twice-contracted second Bianchi identity are found. In our main theorem, a large class of spherically symmetric static Lorentzian metrics with timelike one-dimensional singularities is identified, for which this identity holds. As an important first application we show that the well-known Reissner-Weyl-Nordstr\"om spacetime of a point charge does not belong to this class, but that Hoffmann's spacetime of a point charge with negative bare mass in the Born-Infeld electromagnetic vacuum does.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.00813,
  title  = {Weak second Bianchi identity for static, spherically symmetric spacetimes with timelike singularities},
  author = {Annegret Burtscher and Michael K. -H. Kiessling and A. Shadi Tahvildar-Zadeh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.00813},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

23 pages; added Corollary 2.2, removed Appendix. Final version, to appear in CQG

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:02:27.187Z