On the Propagation of Gravitational Fields in Matter

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A purely covariant treatment is made of those solutions of the Einstein field equations which represent pure gravitational radiation propagating in fluid and electromagnetic media. The analysis involves a discussion of the full Bianchi identities in carefully selected tetrad frames. In this way the interaction between the gravitational field and the medium is transferred to a coupling between a preferred frame for the gravitational field and one for the matter field. The gravitational radiation no longer propagates along shear‐free null geodesics, as it does in vacuum, and the shear and ray curvature of the propagation vector are shown to depend directly on the properties of the medium. Some new solutions of the field equations, representing transverse gravitational waves propagating in an electromagnetic field, are exhibited and discussed in some detail. It is shown that no such solutions exist, at least in simple cases, for perfect fluids. Finally, the treatment presented here is compared with the more usual electromagnetic treatment, and it is shown why the theories require basically different approaches.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: