2013/04/30 by Friedrich W. Hehl, Yuri N. Obukhov, Dirk Puetzfeld · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Differential Geometry Research #Angular momentum #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Gauge theory #General relativity #Gravitation #Mathematical physics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Spacetime #Theoretical physics #Torsion (gastropod) #astro-ph.EP #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2013.04.055
published as Physics Letters A 377 (2013) 1775-1781 · 7 pages of latex with 2 figures, title changed, minor corrections inserted, some references added
openalex publication_date 2013/05/04 · arxiv created 2013/06/07 · arxiv updated 2015/06/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Ever since E.Cartan in the 1920s enriched the geometric framework of general relativity (GR) by introducing a \it torsion of spacetime, the question arose whether one could find a measurement technique for detecting the presence of a torsion field. Mao et al.(2007) claimed that the rotating quartz balls in the gyroscopes of the Gravity Probe B experiment, falling freely on an orbit around the Earth, should "feel" the torsion. Similarly, March et al.(2011) argue with the precession of the Moon and the Mercury and extend later their considerations to the Lageos satellite.--- A consistent theory of gravity with torsion emerged during the early 1960's as gauge theory of the Poincaré group. This Poincaré gauge theory of gravity incorporates as simplest viable cases the Einstein-Cartan(-Sciama-Kibble) theory (EC), the teleparallel equivalent GR|| of GR, and GR itself. So far, PG and, in particular, the existence of torsion have \it not been experimentally confirmed. However, PG is to be considered as the standard theory of gravity with torsion because of its very convincing gauge structure.--- Since the early 1970s up to today, different groups have shown more or less independently that torsion couples only to the \it elementary particle spin and under no circumstances to the orbital angular momentum of test particles. This is established knowledge and we reconfirm this conclusion by discussing the energy-momentum law of PG, which has same form for all versions of PG. Therefore, we conclude that, unfortunately, the investigations of Mao et al. and March et al. do not yield any information on torsion.