Interpreting Einsteins Field Equations

Branden Laske
May 31, 2012
1 Brief History
In order to begin understanding Einsteins Equations and their signicance to our
understanding of space and physics today, I began to research exactly what makes
these equations so signicant. A basic denition to Einsteins Field Equations, we
will denote as EFE, is that they describe the fundamental interaction of gravita-
tion as a result of space-time being curved by matter and energy. These equations
are basically the founding ground for Einsteins general relativity. I read the bi-
ography Einstein, written by Walter Isaacson a couple years ago and he described
that EFE calculates the geometric fabric of space. That is that you can picture
space as a at sheet and taking a star it creates bowl shape dent in the fabric. This
dent inuences nearby objects that are passing by the star and slightly changes
the angle of its linear path.
This is a visual example of how EFE describes an object in space geometrically.
The blue ball in the center is our star, so its obvious to see that if this was to
scale and you rolled a marble passed this star the marble would curve passed the
star and continue on rolling but angled toward a new direction.
Once EFE were published many conclusions began to be discovered. Probably the
most notable of these is the discovery of a big bang. Others included the expansion
of the universe as non-static and existence of black holes.
My reason for choosing this topic was because Ive read alot about Relativity
but have never really gotten a glimpse into the math behind it. Being a math major
you become uent in seeing nothing but proofs and the logic behind the reasoning.
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Since Im taking an astronomy course which discusses heavily on black holes and
the big bang, I gured it was a perfect opportunity for me to do some research
into EFE. From here Im going to start with introducing the most simplied of the
equation and dening some of the notation and try and work through explaining
as much as I can.
2 Equations of General Relativity
2.1 Field Equation
We are going to let our eld equations be of the form:
R

1
2
g

R + g

=
8G
c
4
T

From this we let R

is Ricci curvature tensor, R the scalar curvature, g

is the
metric tensor, is cosmological constant, G is Newtons gravitational constant, c
is the speed of light in vacuum, and T

is stress-energy tensor. We think of this

equation as a set of non-linear partial dierential equations.
When I began studying this equation I learned that each of these variables,
there extended a whole new topic to study. So instead I decided to generalize our
understanding of our general form. From here we are actually able to simplify the
equation even more by parameterizing it using geometrized units. In doing this
we get that G = c = 1 which gives us the new equation:
G

+ g

= 8T

where the left represents curvature of space-time by the metric and the right rep-
resents the matter/energy content of space-time.
2.2 Geodesic Equation
Our second equation which we must look into is called our geodesic equation which
is represented as
d
2
x

ds
2
+

dx

ds
dx

ds
= 0
where s is distance and

is the Levi-Civita connection. We can simply say

this equation dictates how freely-falling matter moves through space-time.
To sum up what I just went through is that our eld equation together with
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the geodesic equation form the core mathematical formulation of general relativity.
The simplest way I could explain the signicance of these equations is the eld
equations tell the way matter tells space-time how to curve. Our geodesic equations
tell the way space-time tells matter to move. Now that we know what our equations
are explaining then I began to look into exactly how physicists obtained such
conclusions such as black holes, expansion, etc.
3 Results of General Relativity
Since most of the results using Einsteins equations is very complex and requires
courses on relativity and other advanced physics Im probably not capable of simply
describing the math behind it. Instead Im going to give verbal and intuitive ideas
of results.
3.1 Gravitational Time Dilation
This is another example of Relativity which I remember from reading Isaacsons
Einstein and how gravity inuences time. Its a similar idea to weighing oneself on
earth and then weighing oneself on lets say the sun. There is a dramatic increase
in our weight on the sun because of the increased gravitational force. Thus, as a
result we would walk much slower, if at all. The same thing happens to a clock
on the sun, it will run much slower. If we set two clocks to the same time and
placed one on earth and the other on the sun. After a couple of weeks we retrieve
both clocks they will have dierent times because the clock on the sun runs much
slower.
This dilation has a similar eect on light in which we light sent into a gravity
well. Our gravity well is our dense matter with a large inuence on gravity. When
light is sent into a gravity well it is blue shifted, while light sent out of a gravity
well is red shifted. This eect is known as gravitational frequency shift. This makes
since because if we describe light as a wave, our wavelength will increase or slow
down as it becomes inuenced by gravity. As that it will decrease or speed up
as it escapes the gravities inuence.
3.2 Light Bending
This result from general relativity is what actually made Einstein as famous and
popular as he is today. The measurements from picture slides taken with sophis-
ticated telescopes would take pictures of stars passing the sun. It wasnt until a
solar eclipse in 1919 proved that the sun deected an object passing by the sun
and changing directions by an angle Einsteins 1916 paper predicted. He became
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an overnight celebrity from this because it was a more accurate estimation than
that of Isaac Newton. This made Einstein the rst physicist to disprove Newton,
with it taking over 100 years for someone to do so. Thus, Relativity can measure
how much inuence gravity has on light.
4 Astrophysical Applications
Relativity has many fascinating results but it also has many excellent applications
to astronomy in which we are more concerned.
4.1 Gravitational Lensing
A basic visual explanation of this is say we are trying to observe an object in the
distance. Now say our object is blocked by some star in between the observer and
our object. Then we will produce what we call an Einstein ring around our object.
From the best of my ability I believe from reading that these lensings are useful
in studying objects because we are able to use this property of matter and light
when analyzing objects in the universe. We can measure the inuence this object
has on light. There are dierent types of lensings such as strong lensing where the
observer will see more than one image of the same source. We have weak lensing
where there arent multiple images formed but our source is distorted. The third
type is called microlensing and the only eect from this is that the eect on the
source is so small that it only makes the object appear brighter.
4.2 Gravitational Waves
This seems to be the still experimental area of Relativity that astronomers are
hoping to analyze and study in the future. Basically they are waiting for gravi-
tational waves to reach us from distant cosmos and studying these is promising
information concerning black holes and other dense objects. It should also give
us information concerning processes of the early universe such as dierent kinds
of supernovae implosions. We can think of these waves as ripples in the fabric of
space.
4.3 Black Holes
As mentioned earlier, Relativity produces results which claim black holes exist.
Basically when we take the ratio of an objects mass to its radius and this ratio
becomes suciently large we result in a black hole. We dene a black hole as a
region in space which nothing, not even light can escape it. These are believed to
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be the nal state of galaxies and astronomical structures. These black holes are
what is thought to be responsible for the increased luminosity of distant objects.
They are also targets in the search of gravitational waves because there is only
so much we actually know about black holes that other phenomena of them is
still unknown. We are hoping that these gravitational waves describe the exact
geometry of these black holes. But for now we only have theoretical ideas or
observed ideas of exactly what they are since we cannot directly see them. We can
only study them by observing what objects are doing around the black hole.
5 Ninety Years and still researched in depth
Even though General relativity is currently over ninety years old it is still highly
researched by physicists today. One of the primary elds of research is under-
standing the nature of singularities and the fundamental properties of Einsteins
equations. These singularities are seen frequently in mathematics in which an ob-
ject is not dened. An example is f(x) =
1
x
where x = 0 is undened and we see
the function explodes at x = or as x . As mentioned early there is still
a race to detect the rst gravitational waves which would help test the theories
validity even more.
6 Experience Researching this Topic
Although I wasnt able to go into full detail and dissect EFE as I was hoping to I
still gained a lot of insight and really enjoyed being able to do some research on
the topic. As I already mentioned I picked up Walter Isaacsons book my freshmen
year and after reading it I became very fascinated with physics ever since. Doing
this paper made me really gain an intuitive understanding of exactly what EFE
describe, how most of the results were obtained, as well as the fundamental ideas
behind them. While trying to break apart the mathematics behind relativity and
hopefully try to simplify it just to summarize, which I did not succeed, I learned
how complicated and high level the mathematics is. While reading about relativity
I believed that the math probably went no higher than vector calculus, but that
was denitely not the case. A lot of the math included dierential calculus which
I took spring quarter of 2011, but it applied some theorems which we did not
discuss. It was also really rewarding that while I learned alot of what General
Relativity gave to astronomy is much of what we did during the quarter including
studying the Big Bang, black holes, four forces, AGNs, properties of light, etc.
If anything the class could be the study of results from general relativity. The
most rewarding thing from doing this project is I now have even more passion and
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reason to do more work into the actual math behind General Relativity because
almost all the math I recognized but would require some practice and applications
to gain a better understanding because its just fascinating that so much can result
from just ten equations Einstein formulated.
7 References
Einstein Field Equations. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 29 May 2012.
Web. 31 May 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein
f
ield
e
quations.
Demystifying Einsteinas Field Equations on General Relativity. HitXP. Web.
31 May 2012. http://www.hitxp.com/articles/science-technology/general-relativity-
eld-equations-simplied/.
General Relativity. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 30 May 2012. Web.
31 May 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General
r
elativity.
Gravitational Lensing. Gravitational Lensing. Web. 31 May 2012.
http://astro.berkeley.edu/ jcohn/lens.html.
Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon Schuster,
2007. Print.
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