quantum123
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Has anyone evaluated the Einstein Field Equation purely in partial derivatives wrt x,y,z,t? What does it look like?
quantum123 said:Has anyone evaluated the Einstein Field Equation purely in partial derivatives wrt x,y,z,t? What does it look like?
quantum123 said:But how many degree and how many order is this EFE PDE?
quantum123 said:I know is has just 4 independent variables (x,y,z,t) and 10 (16-6 due to symmetric matrix) dependent variables right?
quantum123 said:Has anyone evaluated the Einstein Field Equation purely in partial derivatives wrt x,y,z,t? What does it look like?
pervect said:I think we need to step back some, here.
I think what the topic of disucsson is what's known in the literature as "the intial value formulation of General relativity".
One starts by specifying a 3-d spatial metric (this is the metric induced on some particular spatial hypersurface by the full 4-d metric for the Lorentz interval) on some particular 3-d hypersurface which is a "surface of constant time". One also needs to specify something equivalent to the "time derivative" of the metric on this hypersurface. Defining this is a bit tricky, but it's discussed in the textbooks.
So the dynamical variables in this theory are the metric coefficients - more particularly, the spatial metric coefficients.
Given these initial conditions, one can calculate how the metric coefficients change as a function of time (which is a global coordinate).
I do see from my textbook that one winds up with results similar to coalquay404's, but I'm not quite sure where \Phi enters the picture or what it represents.
pervect said:OK, I see that by totally neglecting the constraint equations I glossed over some points which turn out to be crucial.
On some further reading, it looks like \phi^2 = \Omega, where the conformal transformation is g'_{ab} = \Omega^2 g_{ab}, so your equation for \phi (which also appears in Wald) is the equation for the square root of the conformal factor.
pervect said:Given that the the conformal factor satisfies the above diffeq, I guess it's supposed to be "easy" to solve for the time evolution of \dot{g}_{ij}, though I'm not quite sure I understand all the details. If I'm interpreting the equations correctly, the requirement is that K_{ab} = \dot{g}_{ab} be traceles and also satisfy \nabla^a K_{ab} = 0. Wald writes a D rather than an \nabla, so I might be misinterpreting something.
pervect said:Wald writes a D rather than an \nabla, so I might be misinterpreting something.
coalquay404 said:Note, however, that the extrinsic curvature is given more correctly in terms of \dot{g}_{ij} as
K_{ij} = -\frac{1}{2N}(\dot{g}_{ij} - 2\nabla_{(i}N_{j)})
where N is the lapse and N^i is the shift.
pervect said:Aha! - that clears up some of the lose ends that were puzzling me, Wald mentioned that the shift & lapse functions weren't considered to be part of the dynamics, now I understand better how they are eliminated by the right gauge choice.
wandering.the.cosmos said:Actually, I have a basic question of my own. Within this ADM formalism, what sort of gauge choices are possible? With and without coupling to matter? For GR, how does one decide whether a particular choice of gauge is legitimate, ADM or not?
wandering.the.cosmos said:Also, I've thought that the lapse function and shift vector are not part of the dynamics simply because there are no time derivatives of them in the lagrangian. I think it's not necessary to gauge them away to see this?