The Einstein–Maxwell-particle system in the York canonical basis of ADM tetrad gravity. Part 3. The post-minkowskian N-body problem, its post-newtonian limit in nonharmonic 3-orthogonal gauges and dark matter as an inertial effect 1This paper is one of three companion papers published in the same issue of Can. J. Phys.

Abstract

We conclude the study of the post-minkowskian (PM) linearization of ADM tetrad gravity in the York canonical basis for asymptotically minkowskian space–times in the family of nonharmonic 3-orthogonal gauges parametrized by the York time 3K(τ, s) (the inertial gauge variable, not existing in Newton gravity, describing the general relativistic remnant of the freedom in clock synchronization in the definition of the shape of the instantaneous 3-spaces as 3-submanifolds of space–time). As matter we consider only N scalar point particles with a Grassmann regularization of the self-energies and with an ultraviolet cutoff making possible the PM linearization and the evaluation of the PM solution for the gravitational field. We study in detail all the properties of these PM space–times emphasizing their dependence on the gauge variable 3K(1) = (1/Δ)3K(1) (the nonlocal York time): Riemann and Weyl tensors, 3-spaces, time-like and null geodesics, red-shift, and luminosity distance. Then we study the post-newtonian (PN) expansion of the PM equations of motion of the particles. We find that in the two-body case at the 0.5PN order there is a damping (or antidamping) term depending only on 3K(1). This opens the possibility of explaining dark matter in Einstein theory as a relativistic inertial effect: the determination of 3K(1) from the masses and rotation curves of galaxies would give information on how to find a PM extension of the existing PN celestial frame used as an observational convention in the 4-dimensional description of stars and galaxies. Dark matter would describe the difference between the inertial and gravitational masses seen in the non-euclidean 3-spaces, without a violation of their equality in the 4-dimensional space–time as required by the equivalence principle.