2001/07/16 by Matteo Carrera, Carrera, Matteo, Domenico Giulini +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical field theory #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Electromagnetism #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #General relativity #Gravitation #Gravitational field #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Linearized gravity #Massless particle #Mathematical physics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Spacetime #Theoretical physics #Theory of relativity #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/0107058
LaTeX 2e, 11 pages, no figures
arxiv created 2001/07/16 · openalex publication_date 2001/07/16 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider the classical theory of a gravitational field with spin 2 and non-vanishing (Pauli-Fierz) mass in flat spacetime, coupled to electromagnetism and point particles. We establish the law of light propagation and calculate the amount of deflection in the background of a spherically symmetric gravitational field. As the mass tends to zero, the deflection is shown to converge to 3/4 of the value predicted by the massless theory (linearized General Relativity), even though the spherically symmetric solution of the gravitational field equations has no regular limit. This confirms an old argument of van Dam and Veltman on a purely classical level, but also shows its subtle nature.