Related papers: Between a Stone and a Hausdorff Space
We resolve the entire gravitational field;i.e. the Riemann curvature into its electric and magnetic parts. In general, the vacuum Einstein equation is symmetric in active and passive electric parts. However it turns out that the…
The purpose of this article is to highlight the fascinating, but only very incompletely understood relation between Einstein's theory and its generalizations on the one hand, and the theory of indefinite, and in particular hyperbolic, Kac…
The study of dualities is a central issue in several modern approaches to quantum field theory, as they have broad consequences on the structure and on the properties of the theory itself. We call Abelian duality the generalisation to…
By resolving the Riemann curvature relative to a unit timelike vector into electric and magnetic parts, we consider duality relations analogous to the electromagnetic theory. It turns out that the duality symmetry of the Einstein action…
Geodesic orbit equations in the Schwarzschild geometry of general relativity reduce to ordinary conic sections of Newtonian mechanics and gravity for material particles in the non-relativistic limit. On the contrary, geodesic orbit…
We analyze the applications of general relativity in relativistic astrophysics in order to solve the problem of describing the geometric and physical properties of the interior and exterior gravitational and electromagnetic fields of…
A century ago, Einstein formulated his elegant and elaborate theory of General Relativity, which has so far withstood a multitude of empirical tests with remarkable success. Notwithstanding the triumphs of Einstein's theory, the tenacious…
When the vacuum Einstein equations are cast in the form of hamiltonian evolution equations, the initial data lie in the cotangent bundle of the manifold M\Sigma\ of riemannian metrics on a Cauchy hypersurface \Sigma. As in every lagrangian…
Einstein's general relativity is the best available theory of gravity. In recent years, spectacular proofs of Einstein's theory have been conducted, which have aroused interest that goes far beyond the narrow circle of specialists. The aim…
Current physics is faced with the fundamental problem of unifying quantum theory and general relativity, which would have resulted in quantum gravity. The main effort to construct the latter has been bent on quantizing spacetime structure,…
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was proposed a little over a hundred years back. It remained a bedrock of twentieth century physics right up to Quantum Field Theory. However, the failure over several decades to provide a unified…
This is an English translation of the Italian version of an encyclopedia chapter that appeared in the Italian Encyclopedia of the Physical Sciences, edited by Bruno Bertotti (1994). Following requests from colleagues we have decided to make…
Poincar\'e held the view that geometry is a convention and cannot be tested experimentally. This position was apparently refuted by the general theory of relativity and the successful confirmation of its predictions; unfortunately,…
The Heisenberg double of a Hopf algebra may be regarded as a quantum analogue of the cotangent bundle of a Lie group. Quantum duality principle describes relations between a Hopf algebra, its dual, and their Heisenberg double in a way which…
We analyze 2+1-dimensional gravity in the framework of quantum gauge theory. We find that Einstein gravity has a trivial physical subspace which reflects the fact that the classical solution in empty space is flat. Therefore we study…
The tree-level scattering amplitudes of general relativity encode the full non-linearity of the Einstein field equations. Yet remarkably compact expressions for these amplitudes have been found which seem unrelated to a perturbative…
Theories based on General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics have taken a leading position in macroscopic and microscopic Physics, but fail when used in the other extremity. Thus, we try to establish a new structure of united theory based on…
The gravitation equations of the general relativity, written for Riemannian space-time geometry, are extended to the case of arbitrary (non-Riemannian) space-time geometry. The obtained equations are written in terms of the world function…
Various attempts to go beyond the theory of General Relativity start from the assumption that spacetime is not a 4-dimensional but rather a higher-dimensional manifold. Among others, braneworld scenarios postulate that the spacetime we…
The status of experimental tests of general relativity and of theoretical frameworks for analyzing them are reviewed and updated. Einstein's equivalence principle (EEP) is well supported by experiments such as the Eotvos experiment, tests…