Tagged Questions

0
votes
1answer
42 views

Does the actual curvature of spacetime hold energy?

My understanding of GR is that curvature of spacetime reflects the density of energy-matter. Does the curvature itself have energy? Or if energy is assigned to curvature it simply reflects the energy ...
2
votes
1answer
83 views

Stress energy tensor of a perfect fluid and four-velocity

In the following demonstration, there is an error, but I cannot find where. (I explicitely put the $c^2$ to keep track of units). We consider a metric $g_{\mu\nu}$ with a signature $(-, +, +, +)$ : ...
1
vote
1answer
50 views

Does non-mass-energy generate a gravitational field?

At a very basic level I know that gravity isn't generated by mass but rather the stress-energy tensor and when I wave my hands a lot it seems like that implies that energy in $E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2$ ...
1
vote
1answer
174 views

Scalar field stress energy tensor

Can anyone explain why $T_{\mu \nu} = \frac{2}{\sqrt{-g}} \frac{\delta \mathcal{L}_M}{\delta g^{\mu \nu}} $, other than justifying it from the einstein field equations?
3
votes
3answers
134 views

Having trouble seeing the similarity between these two energy-momentum tensors

Leonard Suskind gives the following formulation of the energy-momentum tensor in his Stanford lectures on GR (#10, I believe): $$T_{\mu \nu}=\partial_{\mu}\phi \partial_{\nu}\phi-\frac{1}{2}g_{\mu ...
1
vote
2answers
219 views

fourth rank tensor for stress energy

The Weyl tensor equates the Riemann tensor in vacuum $$ C_{\mu \nu \eta \lambda} = R_{\mu \nu \eta \lambda} $$ So it makes me wonder about the tensor $$T_{\mu \nu \eta \lambda} = C_{\mu \nu \eta ...
3
votes
4answers
210 views

Formulation of general relativity

EDIT: I think I can pinpoint my confusion a bit better. Here comes my updated question (I'm not sure what the standard way of doing things is - please let me know if I should delete the old version). ...
6
votes
1answer
520 views

What is the stress energy tensor?

I'm trying to understand the Einstein Field equation equipped only with training in Riemannian geometry. My question is very simple although I cant extract the answer from the wikipedia page: Is the ...