2023/07/24 by Carla Cederbaum, Cederbaum, Carla, Melanie Graf +1
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #53C12 #58J05 #Analysis of PDEs (math.AP) #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Differential Geometry (math.DG) #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2307.12541
openalex publication_date 2023/07/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The coordinate freedom of General Relativity makes it challenging to find mathematically rigorous and physically sound definitions for physical quantities such as the center of mass of an isolated gravitating system. We will argue that a similar phenomenon occurs in Newtonian Gravity once one ahistorically drops the restriction that one should only work in Cartesian coordinates when studying Newtonian Gravity. This will also shed light on the nature of the challenge of defining the center of mass in General Relativity. Relatedly, we will give explicit examples of asymptotically Euclidean relativistic initial data sets which do not satisfy the Regge--Teitelboim parity conditions often used to achieve a satisfactory definition of center of mass. These originate in our joint work with Jan Metzger. This will require appealing to Bartnik's asymptotic harmonic coordinates.