STRACT: Inertial Frames in Special and General Relativity

[Altabeh]

On a non-geodesic worldline, Fermi normal coordinates make the metric Minkowski at a point on the worldline, but the first derivatives of the metric don't vanish at that point. Is this sufficient to count as locally inertial in some sense, eg. the local speed of light is c?

Fremi normal coordinates are just defined along geodesics (basically timelike geodesics)! The big difference between FNC, RNC and geodesic coordinates (GC) is that the two latter ones make the spacetime along a geodesic locally flat, i.e. at some point, but FNC makes the spacetime globally flat.

AB

 

[atyy]

Fremi normal coordinates are just defined along geodesics (basically timelike geodesics)! The big difference between FNC, RNC and geodesic coordinates (GC) is that the two latter ones make the spacetime along a geodesic locally flat, i.e. at some point, but FNC makes the spacetime globally flat.

I was thinking of Fermi normal coordinate on a timelike curve, not necessarily geodesic, like in section 3.2 of http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2004-6/ .

 

[Altabeh]

I was thinking of Fermi normal coordinate on a timelike curve, not necessarily geodesic, like in section 3.2 of http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2004-6/ .

Well, I've read his own book "A Relativist's toolkit" and there he doesn't bring up this stuff and so it is new to me and if I were able to find some time to spend on it, then I would have something to share!

AB