Einstein versus Maxwell: is gravitation a curvature of space, or a field in flat space, or both?
Theo Nieuwenhuizen
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Amsterdam
Mon, Dec. 18th 2006, 14:15
Salle Claude Itzykson, Bât. 774, Orme des Merisiers
I elaborate on two proposals made in literature.
In 1999 Babak and Grishchuk derived the gravitational energy momentum
tensor by describing, a la Maxwell, gravitation as a field in Minkowski
space. The result can be used to rewrite the Einstein equations in a form
involving the total energy momentum tensor of gravitation plus matter.
This leads to new viewpoints in cosmology: cancellation of gravitational
and matter energy; galaxies not moving in the course of time.
In 1989 Logunov added a small bimetric coupling between the Riemann and
Minkowski metrics, which breaks general coordinate invariance. This allows
to regularize the interior of Schwarzschild black holes (no zeroes or
infinities at the horizon), so that time keeps its ordinary role inside.