pervect said:
That much is mostly right, modulo some sticky questions about how well defined "the energy of the gravitational field" is.
I don't think the OP is "mostly right". You have left out some key items in discussing the Komar mass integral.
First, the OP talks about Schwarzschild spacetime but also mentions a "central star". So we need to clarify exactly what spacetime we are talking about. (This is one reason why I have repeatedly asked the OP to write down an actual integral instead of waving his hands.) The easier case to deal with (and the one I think the OP is referring to, based on what he has said in various posts in this thread) is the case of a spherically symmetric massive body surrounded by vacuum. This is the case I will discuss in this post (I'll save the more difficult case of maximally extended Schwarzschild spacetime, where there is vacuum everywhere, in a follow-up post).
The relevant form of the Komar mass integral as a volume integral for this case is
$$
M = \int_0^{\infty} \left( \rho + 3 p \right) \sqrt{g_{rr} g_{tt}} 4 \pi r^2 dr
$$
For details on how this is derived, see my Insights article here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/gravity-gravitate-part-2-sequel/
The factor ##\rho + 3 p## is what you get when you evaluate the factor ##\left( 2 T_{ab} - g_{ab} T \right) u^a u^b## for a spherically symmetric, static perfect fluid.
Note that there are
two correction factors in the integral, ##\sqrt{g_{rr}}## and ##\sqrt{g_{tt}}##. The former is the one you discussed, the "volume element" correction. But you did not mention a critical point: you need ##g_{rr}## in the
matter region, whose geometry is
not the Schwarzschild vacuum geometry, so the value of ##g_{rr}## in this region will not be the one you gave. In the vacuum region, where ##g_{rr}## has the Schwarzschild vacuum value you gave, ##\rho## and ##p## are zero (vacuum, no stress-energy), so this region makes zero contribution to the volume integral.
The second correction factor is the "redshift factor" correction that I have mentioned in previous posts. The net effect of the combined corrections is to give a factor that reduces the total value of the integral just enough to compensate for the addition of the ##3p## factor in the integrand. In other words, the actual value of the integral is identical to the value of the following integral:
$$
M = \int_0^{\infty} 4 \pi \rho r^2 dr
$$
which, as a matter of fact, can be derived directly from the ##tt## component of the Einstein Field Equation, without ever having to worry about either pressure (note that only ##\rho## appears in the above integral) or any correction factors for the volume element or the redshift. Some sources refer to this phenomenon as pressure just balancing gravitational binding energy in hydrostatic equilibrium.
pervect said:
the Schwarzschild mass M is not equal to "the energy of matter", it is lower.
To state this more precisely, the mass ##M## obtained from the above integrals is smaller than the following:
$$
\bar{M} = \int_0^{\infty} 4 \pi \rho r^2 \sqrt{g_{rr}} dr
$$
which is, intuitively, what you get by trying to integrate the density of the matter over the actual proper volume of the matter. However, this integral does not represent anything physical, because the reason why the proper volume of the matter is larger than the Euclidean value is that the matter is in a bound system in static equilibrium, and there is no way to put the matter in a bound system and have it be in static equilibrium and have
only the ##\sqrt{g_{rr}}## correction factor. You have to also include the ##\sqrt{g_{tt}}## correction factor for redshift, and you have to include pressure, because the object has to have pressure to support itself against its own gravity, and pressure is part of the stress-energy tensor so it is a source of gravity and you can't just leave it out.