Formulation Of General Relativity Research Articles

Coupling metric-affine gravity to a Higgs-like scalar field

General Relativity (GR) exists in different formulations. They are equivalent in pure gravity but generically lead to distinct predictions once matter is included. After a brief overview of various versions of GR, we focus on metric-affine gravity, which avoids any assumption about the vanishing of curvature, torsion or non-metricity. We use it to construct an action of a scalar field coupled non-minimally to gravity. It encompasses as special cases numerous previously studied models. Eliminating non-propagating degrees of freedom, we derive an equivalent theory in the metric formulation of GR. Finally, we give a brief outlook to implications for Higgs inflation.

Mass and spin of Kerr black holes in terms of observational quantities: The dragging effect on the redshift

In this work, we elaborate on the development of a general relativistic formalism that allows one to analytically express the mass and spin parameters of the Kerr black hole in terms of observational data: the total redshift and blueshift of photons emitted by massive geodesic particles revolving the black hole and their orbital parameters. Thus, we present concise closed formulas for the mass and spin parameters of the Kerr black hole in terms of few directly observed quantities in the case of equatorial circular orbits either when the black hole is static or is moving with respect to a distant observer. Furthermore, we incorporate the gravitational dragging effect generated by the rotating nature of the Kerr black hole into the analysis and elucidate its nontrivial contribution to the expression for the light bending parameter and the frequency shifts of photons emitted by orbiting particles that renders simple symmetric expressions for the kinematic redshift and blueshift. We also incorporate the dependency of the frequency shift on the azimuthal angle, a fact that allows one to express the total redshift/blueshift at any point of the orbit of the revolving particle for the cases when the black hole is both static or moving with respect to us. These formulas allow one to compute the Kerr black hole parameters by applying this general relativistic formalism to astrophysical systems like the megamaser accretion disks orbiting supermassive black holes at the core of active galactic nuclei. Our results open a new window to implement parameter estimation studies to constrain black hole variables, and they can be generalized to black hole solutions beyond Einstein's gravity.

Effective Actions for Regge Piecewise Flat Quantum Gravity

We review the construction of the path integral and the corresponding effective action for the Regge formulation of General Relativity under the assumption that the short-distance structure of the spacetime is not a smooth 4-manifold, but a piecewise linear manifold based on a triangulation of a smooth 4-manifold. We point out that the exponentially damped 4-volume path-integral measure does not give a finite path integral, although it can be used for the construction of the perturbative effective action. We modify the 4-volume measure by multiplying it by an inverse power of the product of the edge-lengths such that the new measure gives a finite path integral while it retains all the nice features of the unmodified measure.

Hamiltonian formalism of the Bianchi's models

Lately the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB) data have resulted in anomalies or deviations with respect to the standard model of cosmology, which has led several cosmologists to consider alternative models to the standard model (homogeneous and isotropic), such as the Bianchi models, which are homogeneous but anisotropic. Based on these motivations to consider alternative models, we propose to study, in the present work, the algebraic classification of the Bianchi models and each of the Bianchi space-times, applying the ADM formalism of general relativity in its Hamiltonian version and the groups G3 . The dynamic equations are shown with the help of the Hamiltonian density H and the Poisson parentheses, in other words, the equations of motion are presented for each of the Bianchi space-times. Some theoretical consequences of these equations are discussed when we take the limit Ω → -∞ and the fixed parameters β + and β - , consequently, we find that the dependent part of the gravitational potential from the Hamiltonian Density tends to zero and from the equations of motion we find the constant of motion, pΩ = pβ+ = pβ- = constant .

Weak Gravitation in the 4+1 Formalism

The 4+1 formalism in general relativity (GR) prescribes field equations for the spacetime metric γμνx,τ which is local in the spacetime coordinates x and evolves according to an external “worldtime” τ. This formalism extends to GR the Stueckelberg Horwitz Piron (SHP) framework, developed to address the various issues known as the problem of time as they appear in electrodynamics. SHP field theories exhibit a formal 5D symmetry on (x,τ) that is strategically broken to 4+1 representations of the Lorentz group, resulting in a manifestly covariant canonical formalism describing the τ-evolution of spacetime structures as an initial value problem. Einstein equations for γμνx,τ are found by constructing a 5D pseudo-manifold (combining 4D geometry and τ-dynamics) and performing the natural foliation under broken 5D symmetry. This paper discusses weak gravitation in the 4+1 formalism, demonstrating the natural decomposition of the field equations into first-order evolution equations for the unconstrained 4D metric, and the propagation of constraints associated with the Bianchi identity.

Effect of the Nuclear Equation of State on Relativistic Turbulence-induced Core-collapse Supernovae

Abstract The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is an important component in the evolution of core-collapse supernovae. In this paper we make a survey of various EOSs in the literature and analyze their effect on spherical core-collapse models in which the effects of three-dimensional turbulence is modeled by a general relativistic formulation of Supernova Turbulence In Reduced-dimensionality (STIR). We show that the viability of the explosion is quite EOS dependent and that it best correlates with the early-time interior entropy density of the proto–neutron star. We check that this result is not progenitor dependent, although the lowest-mass progenitors show different explosion properties, due to the different pre-collapse nuclear composition. Larger central entropies also induce more vigorous proto–neutron star convection in our one-dimensional turbulence model, as well as a wider convective layer.

Von Neumann Stability Analysis of DG-Like and PNPM-Like Schemes for PDEs with Globally Curl-Preserving Evolution of Vector Fields

This paper examines a class of involution-constrained PDEs where some part of the PDE system evolves a vector field whose curl remains zero or grows in proportion to specified source terms. Such PDEs are referred to as curl-free or curl-preserving, respectively. They arise very frequently in equations for hyperelasticity and compressible multiphase flow, in certain formulations of general relativity and in the numerical solution of Schrödinger’s equation. Experience has shown that if nothing special is done to account for the curl-preserving vector field, it can blow up in a finite amount of simulation time. In this paper, we catalogue a class of DG-like schemes for such PDEs. To retain the globally curl-free or curl-preserving constraints, the components of the vector field, as well as their higher moments, must be collocated at the edges of the mesh. They are updated using potentials collocated at the vertices of the mesh. The resulting schemes: (i) do not blow up even after very long integration times, (ii) do not need any special cleaning treatment, (iii) can operate with large explicit timesteps, (iv) do not require the solution of an elliptic system and (v) can be extended to higher orders using DG-like methods. The methods rely on a special curl-preserving reconstruction and they also rely on multidimensional upwinding. The Galerkin projection, highly crucial to the design of a DG method, is now conducted at the edges of the mesh and yields a weak form update that uses potentials obtained at the vertices of the mesh with the help of a multidimensional Riemann solver. A von Neumann stability analysis of the curl-preserving methods is conducted and the limiting CFL numbers of this entire family of methods are catalogued in this work. The stability analysis confirms that with the increasing order of accuracy, our novel curl-free methods have superlative phase accuracy while substantially reducing dissipation. We also show that PNPM-like methods, which only evolve the lower moments while reconstructing the higher moments, retain much of the excellent wave propagation characteristics of the DG-like methods while offering a much larger CFL number and lower computational complexity. The quadratic energy preservation of these methods is also shown to be excellent, especially at higher orders. The methods are also shown to be curl-preserving over long integration times.

The 3+1 formalism in teleparallel and symmetric teleparallel gravity

Teleparallel and symmetric teleparallel gravity offer platforms in which gravity can be formulated in interesting geometric approaches, respectively given by torsion and nonmetricity. In this vein, general relativity can be expressed in three dynamically equivalent ways which may offer insights into the different properties of these decompositions such as their Hamiltonian structure, the efficiency of numerical analyses, as well as the classification of gravitational field degrees of freedom. In this work, we take a 3+1 decomposition of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity and the symmetric teleparallel equivalent of general relativity which are both dynamically equivalent to curvature based general relativity. By splitting the spacetime metric and corresponding tetrad into their spatial and temporal parts as well as through finding the Gauss-like equations, it is possible to set up a general foundation for the different formulations of gravity. Based on these results, general 3-tetrad and 3-metric evolution equations are derived. Finally through the choice of the two respective connections, the metric 3+1 formulation for general relativity is recovered as well as the tetrad 3+1 formulation of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity and the metric 3+1 formulation of symmetric teleparallel equivalent of general relativity. The approach is capable, in principle, of resolving common features of the various formulations of general relativity at a fundamental level and pointing out characteristics that extensions and alternatives to the various formulations can present.

Extended General Relativity: (3+1)-anyons in a preinflationary cosmological model

We propose an extended General Relativistic formalism with boundary terms included, that describes the dynamics of quantum spinor fields, which can take intermediate values, named (3+1)-anyons. In the approach here worked, we use an extended manifold in which the left( 3+1right) -anyon fields can be expressed as a linear combination of bosons and fermions. We calculate the flow of these fields with self-interactions included in a preinflationary model that describes the birth of the universe from a null Hubble parameter, and we obtain the value of the cosmological parameter at this moment due to the flux of (3+1)-anyons through the 3d-closed hypersurface. The spectral indices at the end of preinflation are in very good agreement with observations. In particular the tensor to scalar ratio obtained at the end of preinflation is very small: r(phi _*) = 0.00336.

Extended General Relativity: Gravitational waves from an isotropic and homogeneous collapse

Using an extended General Relativistic formalism with boundary terms included that describe sources, we study the non-perturbative Gravitational Waves emitted from a spatially homogeneous and isotropic collapsing system described by a scalar field, which avoid the final singularity.

Inevitability of the Poisson Bracket Structure of the Relativistic Constraints

The purpose of this paper is to shed some fresh light on the long-standing conceptual question of the origin of the well-known Poisson bracket structure of the constraints that govern the canonical dynamics of generally relativistic field theories, i.e. geometrodynamics. This structure has long been known to be the same for a wide class of fields that inhabit the space-time, namely those with non-differential coupling to gravity. It has also been noticed that an identical bracket structure can be derived independently of any dynamical theory, by purely geometrical considerations in Lorentzian geometry. Here we attempt to provide the missing link between the dynamics and geometry, which we understand to be the reason for this structure to be of the specific kind. We achieve this by a careful analysis of the geometrodynamical approach, which allows us to derive the structure in question and understand it as a consistency requirement for any such theory. In order to stay close to the classical literature on the subject we stick to the metric formulation of general relativity, but the reasoning should carry over to any other formulation as long as the non-metricity tensor vanishes. The discussion section is devoted to derive some interesting consequences of the presented result in the context of reconstructing the Arnowitt–Deser–Misner (ADM) framework, thus providing a precise sense to the inevitability of the Einstein’s theory under minimal assumptions.

Thick braneworld model in nonmetricity formulation of general relativity and its stability

In this paper, we study the thick brane system in the so-called f(Q) gravity, where the gravitational interaction was encoded by the nonmetricity Q like scalar curvature R in general relativity. With a special choice of f(Q)=Q-b Q^n, we find that the thick brane system can be solved analytically with the first-order formalism, where the complicated second-order differential equation is transformed to several first-order differential equations. Moreover, the stability of the thick brane system under tensor perturbation is also investigated. It is shown that the tachyonic states are absent and the graviton zero mode can be localized on the brane. Thus, the four-dimensional Newtonian potential can be recovered at low energy. Besides, the corrections of the massive graviton Kaluza–Klein modes to the Newtonian potential are also analyzed briefly.

Galilean first-order formulation for the nonrelativistic expansion of general relativity

We reformulate the Palatini action for general relativity (GR) in terms of moving frames that exhibit local Galilean covariance in a large speed of light expansion. For this, we express the action in terms of variables that are adapted to a Galilean subgroup of the $GL(n,\mathbb{R})$ structure group of a general frame bundle. This leads to a novel Palatini-type formulation of GR that provides a natural starting point for a first-order non-relativistic expansion. In doing so, we show how a comparison of Lorentzian and Newton-Cartan metric-compatibility explains the appearance of torsion in the non-relativistic expansion.

Teleparallel Gravity: Foundations and Observational Constraints—Editorial

Einstein’s formulation of general relativity as a theory based on the geometry of curvature was a necessity due to Riemannian geometry being the only fully developed framework at the time [...]

Cosmology of strongly interacting fermions in the early universe

In view of growing interest in long range scalar forces in the early universe to generate primordial black holes, we study in detail the general relativistic formulation of a Fermi gas interacting with a scalar field in cosmology. Motivated by long range forces, we mainly focus on the cosmological massless limit of the scalar field. In this limit, our main finding is that the Yukawa interaction leads to a solution where the scalar field oscillates around zero fermion mass and all energy densities decay as radiation. On one hand, we show that if the Fermi gas starts relativistic, it could stay relativistic. On the other hand, if the fermions are initially non-relativistic, they remain non-relativistic for all practical purposes. We find that in both cases the energy density of the fermions and the scalar field decays as radiation. In the non-relativistic case, this is due to an oscillating and decaying effective mass. Such background dynamics questions whether there is a substantial enhancement of the fermion density fluctuations in the non-relativistic case. Our work can be easily extended to more general field dependent fermion mass and to general scalar field potentials. The analysis of the cosmological perturbations will be presented in a follow-up work.

General Relativistic Neutrino-driven Turbulence in One-dimensional Core-collapse Supernovae

Abstract Convection and turbulence in core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) are inherently three-dimensional (3D) in nature. However, 3D simulations of CCSNe are computationally demanding. Thus, it is valuable to modify simulations in spherical symmetry to incorporate 3D effects using some parametric model. In this paper, we report on the formulation and implementation of general relativistic neutrino-driven turbulent convection in the spherically symmetric core-collapse supernova code GR1D. This is based upon the recently proposed method of Simulated Turbulence in Reduced Dimensionality (STIR) in Newtonian simulations from Couch et al. (2020). When the parameters of this model are calibrated to 3D simulations, we find that our general relativistic formulation of STIR requires larger turbulent eddies to achieve a shock evolution similar to the original STIR model. We also find that general relativity may alter the correspondence between progenitor mass and successful versus failed explosions.

Deformations of GR, geometrodynamics and reality conditions

In four dimensions complexified general relativity (GR) can be non-trivially deformed: there exists an (infinite-parameter) set of modifications all having the same count of degrees of freedom. It is trivial to impose reality conditions that give versions of the deformed theories corresponding to Riemannian and split metric signatures. We revisit the Lorentzian signature case. To make the problem tractable, we restrict our attention to a four-parameter set of deformations that are natural extensions of Ashtekar’s Hamiltonian formalism for GR. The Hamiltonian of the later is a linear combination of EEE and EEB. We consider theories for which the Hamiltonian constraint is a general linear combination of EEE, EEB, EBB and BBB. Our main result is the computation of the evolution equations for the modified theories as geometrodynamics evolution equations for the three-metric. We show that only for GR (and the related theory of self-dual gravity) these equations close in the sense that they can be written in terms of only the metric and its first time derivative. Modified theories are therefore seen to be essentially non-metric in the sense that their dynamics cannot be reduced to geometrodynamics. We then show this to be related to the problem with Lorentzian reality conditions: the conditions of reality of the three-metric and its time derivative are not acceptable because they are not preserved by the dynamics. Put differently, their conservation implies extra reality conditions on higher-order time derivatives, which then leaves no room for degrees of freedom.

A 4+1 Formalism for the Evolving Stueckelberg-Horwitz-Piron Metric

We propose a field theory for the local metric in Stueckelberg–Horwitz–Piron (SHP) general relativity, a framework in which the evolution of classical four-dimensional (4D) worldlines xμτ (μ=0,1,2,3) is parameterized by an external time τ. Combining insights from SHP electrodynamics and the ADM formalism in general relativity, we generalize the notion of a 4D spacetime M to a formal manifold M5=M×R, representing an admixture of geometry (the diffeomorphism invariance of M) and dynamics (the system evolution of Mτ with the monotonic advance of τ∈R). Strategically breaking the formal 5D symmetry of a metric gαβ(x,τ) (α,β=0,1,2,3,5) posed on M5, we obtain ten unconstrained Einstein equations for the τ-evolution of the 4D metric γμν(x,τ) and five constraints that are to be satisfied by the initial conditions. The resulting theory differs from five-dimensional (5D) gravitation, much as SHP U(1) gauge theory differs from 5D electrodynamics.

Relativistic Effects in Orbital Motion of the S-Stars at the Galactic Center

The Galactic Center star cluster, known as S-stars, is a perfect source of relativistic phenomena observations. The stars are located in the strong field of relativistic compact object Sgr A* and are moving with very high velocities at pericenters of their orbits. In this work we consider motion of several S-stars by using the Parameterized Post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism of General Relativity (GR) and Post-Newtonian (PN) equations of motion of the Feynman’s quantum-field gravity theory, where the positive energy density of the gravity field can be measured via the relativistic pericenter shift. The PPN parameters β and γ are constrained using the S-stars data. The positive value of the Tg00 component of the gravity energy–momentum tensor is confirmed for condition of S-stars motion.

Fluctuation dynamics in a relativistic fluid with a critical point

To describe dynamics of bulk and fluctuations near the QCD critical point we develop general relativistic fluctuation formalism for a fluid carrying baryon charge. Feedback of fluctuations modifies hydrodynamic coefficients including bulk viscosity and conductivity and introduces nonlocal and noninstantaneous terms in constitutive equations. We perform necessary ultraviolet (short-distance) renormalization to obtain cutoff-independent deterministic equations suitable for numerical implementation. We use the equations to calculate the universal nonanalytic small-frequency dependence of transport coefficients due to fluctuations (long-time tails). Focusing on the critical mode we show how this general formalism matches existing $\text{Hydro+}$ description of fluctuations near the QCD critical point and nontrivially extends it inside and outside of the critical region.